BV 880 

Copy 1 



THE 

PRIESTHOOD AND THE PEOPLE. 



THE 



PRIESTHOOD AND THE PEOPLE. 



BY 

/ 

FREDERICK J. FOXTON, A.B., 

AUTHOR OF "POPULAR CHRISTIANITi," ETC. 



,c Ich hab'es ofters riilimen lioren, 
Em Komodiant konnt einen Pfarrer lehren — " 

" Ja, weun der Pfarrer ein. Eomodiant ist !" 

Goethb. 



LONDON: 

TEUBNEE AND CO,, 60, PATEENOSTEE EOW. 

1862. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



A PAiiT of the following pages was written some years 
ago, and thrown aside, and a part also appeared in the 
e< Freaman." This will explain the date of some of the 
allusions. The civil war that has broken out in the 
Church, excited by the publication of the " Essays and 
Reviews," and the absolute doctrinal anarchy that pre- 
vails, both within and without its pale, appear to me 
to give fresh pertinency and significance to the matters 
I have discussed. The diseases of the Ecclesiastical 
Body are evidently not merely inflammatory and transient, 
but permanent and chronic. 

F. J. R 

February 1862. 



PRIESTHOOD 



THE 

AND 



THE 



PEOPLE. 



" A Priest,' 3 said Jeremy Collier, S( is the highest of human 
beings." He should rather have said, the highest of human 
beings is a Priest, Perhaps the simplest and most primitive 
idea of a Priest, is that of an aged man, who has seen and felt 
the reality of life, and has the faculty of imparting to others 
the true results of his experience, A young Priest, that is* 
a young Elder, is a solecism in language, and a contradiction in 
terms. A Priest is not merely the teacher of a systematic 
morality, but the interpreter of the mysteries of the inner life. 
True Priests are the spiritual flowerage and blossom of their 
age ; the Poets, the Prophets, the Seers, and the Philosophers 
who reflect the culture, and expound the dominant ideas of their 
time, and by a more direct insight into the order of nature, 
material and moral, than is granted to the vulgar, are able to 
"prophesy" of things "that shall be hereafter." We may 
generally estimate the intellectual and spiritual character of an 
age or nation by the character of its Priests. In the lowest 
stages of barbarism the Priest is represented by the " Medi- 
cine-man" and the " Conjuror." In the infancy of scienc e 
the office of the Priest (for Science also has its Priests) is 
usurped by the Astrologer and the Alchemist. In the dark 
and middle ages, the Priest assumed his natural place in the 



8 



van of civilization, as he was the sole depository of whatever 
science and learning the world then possessed, and was m some 
degree the expounder of its spiritual instincts. Priests were 
then, in fact, the <c Eiders of the people" in intelligence and 
culture. From the ceils of monks came forth, ideas, even yet 
imperfectly realized in physical science, and the tc prophecies'' 
of Roger Bacon, like those of his illustrious namesake in a 
later age, are still in the course of fulfilment in our laboratories 
and workshops. At the same time, the profound religious me- 
taphysics of Abelard and Anselm, and a whole host of " subtle/' 
f ' seraphic," and " angelic" doctors " amused the leisure of the 
learned, and fed the fanaticism of the vulgar." 

The invention of printing, and the consequent diffusion of 
knowledge amongst the people, entirely changed the relations 
of clerisy and laity, or, more properly speaking, broke down 
the barrier that divided them. From the period of the Refor- 
mation to the present time, sacerdotalism in Europe (and more 
especially in England, the most vigorous member of the Euro- 
pean Commonwealth) has been struggling for its life in the 
grasp of an intellectual democracy. The Priest is no longer 
either the spiritual or intellectual guide of adult Englishmen. 
Young ladies in watering-places, and old ones in Cathedral 
cities, may, indeed, still continue to amuse themselves by play- 
ing at Popery with the Puseyite clergy, but with the cultivated 
and intelligent portion of the upper and middle classes, and 
with the whole mass of the toiling millions below them, sacer- 
dotalism has entirely lost its ancient significance. The moral 
life of the age is absolutely untouched, either by the doctrinal 
teaching, or maimed ceremonial of the Churches ; and this is 
frankly acknowledged by the clergy themselves. The Bishop 
of Oxford honestly confessed, in his place in the House of Lords, 
that " the people display an entire want of faith in the divine 
mission of the Church that " men believed that there was no 
presence of God with her ; that there was no truth of God in 
h@r."* The Dean of Bristol tells us, amidst the rapturous 



* See « Times" report, July 12, 1851. 



9 



cheers of his audience, " that there is scarce a heresy that has 
ever entered into the Church except by the way of the clergy 
and he denounces the pretences even of the modern clergy as 
" the substitution of the agency of man for the workings of the 
free spirit of God"* 

A Quarterly Reviewer complains, that a City missionary with 
a white neck-cloth, and in the garb of a clergyman, can obtain 
no hearing among the "City Arabs/' but that the} 7 gladly listen 
to the tidings of salvation when delivered over a black stock !f 
The picture of the Church, indeed, as painted by herself, is suffi- 
ciently melancholy, and the effect she has produced on the 
mind and morals of the people, after three centuries of reformed 
Christianity, is by no means encouraging. Mr. Clay, the late 
chaplain of the Preston gaol, tells us, that 40 per cent, of the 
prisoners had never heard of the name of the Saviour 4 In 
their daily appeals to the laity for pecuniary aid, in the public 
papers, the clergy almost uniformly describe themselves as 
ministering amidst a mass of heathenism, and as being every- 
where received by the poorer classes with derision, suspicion, 
and contempt ; and they tell us that the Gospel according to 
Mr. Holyoake is fast superseding the Gospel of Christ. Others 
of the clergy are clamorous in proclaiming that the growing 
infidelity of the people is to be traced to the influence of (i Penny 
Periodicals" and cheap literature, which, considering the admitted 
improvement in the moral tendency and scientific character of 
these writings, is virtually an admission that the faith of the 
people is in an inverse ratio to their culture and intelligence. 
With much still to be desired, it may be fearlessly asserted, that 
the press in England was never more moral than at the present 
time — never more free from the imputation of libel, obscenity, 
and irreligion. It is proved, moreover, by the statistics of the 
book trade, that the impure and unsound portion of our litera- 
ture (in general translated from the French) is addressed rather 

* See " Times" report, jSTorember 22, 1850. 
f See Quarterly Eeview, No. 205. 

X See Sir John Pakington's speech in the House of Commons, 
" Times' report, January, 1858, 



10 



to the middle and upper, than to the (( proletaire" class ; and 
that to the latter, " Wood's Algebra" has been found more at- 
tractive than the novels of Paul de Kock, the " Phalanstere" 
of Fourrier, or the Communism of Louis Blanc* 

But I return to the picture of the Church as painted by her- 
self. In the report of the eighteenth annual meeting of the 
" Pastoral Aid Society," May 10th, 1853, Mr. (now Dean) Close 
is reported to have said — C( I, in common with many others of 
the clergy, have been persuaded, that under the most favourable 
circumstances the great bulk of our labouring population do 
not go to any place of worship. The question," he naively 
adds, u is how are we to get at them ?" The Bishop of Landaff 
tells us that two miles from his " Palace" the town of Cardiff is 
"heathen," and he compares it unfavourably with <{ Benares " ! 
Out of sixty families in one street, only five made even the pro- 
fession of going to any place of worship. A most startling 
and significant fact is established by the census of 1851, viz., 
that in the three largest towns in the empire, the accommoda- 
tion afforded by the churches immensely exceeds the wants of 
the people. It is stated in this report (page 87) that less than 
half the number that might have attended the ministrations of 
the churches, were actually present on the day of the census, viz., 
in the morning there were absent (in round numbers) five millions 
— in the evening, seven millions — afternoon, seven millions f The 
writer of the report (an orthodox dissenter, I believe) sums up by 
saying (page 89) — " It is tolerably certain that the Jive millions 
who every Sunday neglect religious ordinances, do so of their 
own free choice, and are not compelled by deficiency of sittings." 
And again (page 120), " Neglect like this, in spite of opportu- 
nities of worship, indicates the insufficiency of any mere addition 
to the number of buildings" The want of the people is a credi- 
ble doctrine — they ask for " bread, " and not for a " stone" 

* See article on the " Literature of the Rail," in the " Times," since 
republished by Murray. 

f The Rev. G. P. Saffery, a travelling orator of the Religious Tract 
Society, tells us that the " infidel pres3 " circulates ten millions more 
Tracts than the Religious Tract Society, Christian Knowledge Society, 
and Bible Society united. (See speech at Preston, Lancashire, some few 
years ago.) 



11 



Such, then, is the position of the modern Priesthood in rela- 
tion to the people, admitted by the Church herself. A portion 
of the upper classes, indeed, seem to give an otiose assent to 
sacerdotal pretensions, as an element of conservative policy ; but 
nearly the whole of the periodical press (which, with its many- 
faults, assuredly represents the public sentiment) is arrayed 
against them. The great organs of opinion are the severest 
critics of our ecclesiastical system, ever " ready to wound/' if still 
" afraid to strike and the " faint praise that damns" is all 
that can be extracted even from its political supporters. The 
state is no longer the "nursing mother" of the Church, and the 
government and people alike repudiate, with a smile of derision, 
the learned labours of her " Convocation." In fact, both the 
political and social influence of the clergy proper- — (as dis- 
tinguished from those who have acquired a position in literature, 
science^ or philosophy) — has nearly disappeared from amongst us. 

But if this be a true^ picture of the Church and its clergy, 
how comes it to pass, it may be asked, that they still retain 
even a feeble vitality in an age so utterly opposed to their pre- 
tensions ? " "When the life is out of a thing it must die," is an 
axiom in physics, and (metaphorically) in morals. As life is 
the essence of animal organizations, so truth is essentially the 
life of Religion. But we must remember that institutions that 
once had a true life in them, and a life-giving power, do not 
die all at once : and that the progress of decay conforms to a 
law as regular as that of growth. The Pope, the great Arch- 
Priest of Christendom, has, according to Carlyle, received notice 
to quit for three hundred years, and during that period has once 
been deposed and imprisoned by a " Corsican Lieutenant of 
Artillery," and once had to fly from his indignant subjects in 
the disguise of a lackey. He still, however, continues to exer- 
cise his motley sovereignty over the largest portion of the 
Christian world — the ignorant and superstitious being influenced 
by the prestige of his spiritual, and the timid and conservative 
doing homage to his political character. The fact is, that every- 
where the ignorance and credulity of the people, and the spiritual 
pretensions of a Priesthood, act and react upon each other, as 
cause and effect. Priestly domination perpetuates the ignorance 



12 



and credulity of the people, and the popular ignorance perpetu- 
ates the influence of the Priesthood. Perhaps, as Lord Ma- 
eaulay seemed to believe,* the rigid sacerdotalism of Piome 
has more life in it than the semi-sacerdotalism of the Pro- 
testant sects, as it has a deeper root in the spiritual realities 
of the past. In the middle ages, a barefooted monk stood 
between hostile armies, and commanded peace in the name of 
God. The modern clerical magistrate, backed by the civil power, 
is unable to separate a couple of pugilists ! The fierce and tur- 
bulent Baron of the days of the Plantagenets stood uncovered 
in the presence of the mitred Abbot. The Protestant Bishop of 
the nineteenth century has to bend and cringe before the rising: 
spirit of democracy. 

It is impossible to doubt, when we carefully observe the spirit 
of the times, that the Anglican Priesthood, at least, has reached 
its culminating point, and is steadily on the decline. The evan- 
gelical clergy, in common with their dissenting brethren of all 
sects, are frankly, and even ostentatiously, protesting everywhere 
against the spirit of sacerdotalism. The English universities, 
and the Protestant university of Ireland, the great nurseries of 
the Anglican Priesthood, have been recently under the process 
of purification. Parliaments are devoting a larger portion of 
their time to enquiries into ecclesiastical abuses — the manage- 
ment of episcopal revenues — the jobbings of Deans and Chapters 
— the nepotism of Bishops, and the non-residence of the clergy. 
The Protestant Church and clergy stand related to the people 
much as the Catholic Church and clergy at the period of the 
Reformation. The State has undertaken to reform, and in 
doing so, will assuredly destroy them. The history of the world 
affords innumerable examples of the collision of the co-ordinate 
powers of Church and State, and in advanced stages of civilization 
the State is always triumphant. The power of Parliament, and the 

* See llacaulay's Review of *' f Eanke's History of the Popes/' for 
his dextrous and somewhat sophistical argument. He asks, how is 
Catholicism to perish 1 I answer, when a more Catholic doctrine is 
taught. Protestantism is actually less Catholic. The cure for Catholic- 
ism is Catholicity. Protestantism is Popery and water — Popery diluted 
with a vague religious Idealism. It is not so much a religion as an 
Idea imperfectly conceir&d. 



13 



force of public opinion, are sure to be too strong for th-e shadowy 
abstractions of religious metaphysics and monkish theology. A 
priesthood, however, so richly endowed as the Anglican may be 
expected to " die hard," and often when it appears to be dying, 
may only be changing the conditions of life ; throwing over- 
board, from time to time, during the storm that is raging around 
it, some unpopular dogma, or Priestly pretension, for the security 
of the rest. 

The anti-sacerdotal and semi-rationalistic zeal of the evan- 
gelical clergy may be fairly attributed to their hatred of their 
Puseyite antagonists. The illogical and short-sighted, or else 
dishonest and equivocating position assumed by these rose-water 
Reformers, is, however, utterly untenable. They are professedly 
ready to abandon a portion of the authority of their office ; but 
they still continue to contend fiercely for the sacred form of 
investiture. tc Episcopal ordination 5 ' is to them as "the apple 
of their eye;" but when once " ordained" and provided for, they 
freely adopt the doctrine and discipline of dissent. They con- 
tinue to " consecrate the elements" in the mysterious language 
of antiquity, whilst they repudiate its grammatical meaning. 
On the platform, they openly brand as Papistical the offices 
they use in their Churches. They derive their popularity and 
their pew-rents from pandering to the spirit of dissent, and receive 
a supplementary revenue from the coffers of orthodoxy. They 
are like those married libertines who lavish their caresses on a 
fascinating mistress, whilst they live upon the fortune of an 
ugly and neglected wife. They are by no means so anxious to 
avoid the " idolatries" as they are to enjoy the " spoils of the 
Egyptians." 

But if the modern " Minister" of religion is not honestly a 
" Priest," it may reasonably be asked, " Wliat is he V If he is 
not divinely appointed, and supernaturally endowed to mediate 
in Holy things between man and his Maker — if he is not the 
anointed custodian, and infallible expounder of some external 
revelation, how is he distinguished from the often better-in- 
structed and more devout - minded laity amongst whom he 
ministers ? What is he more, according to his own theory, after 
the "imposition of hands" than he was before ? Has he, or has 



14 



lie not, received the " gift of the Holy Ghost V It has been 
truly said that this question involves either the most solemn 
mystery, or the most blasphemous absurdity. But the ordained 
evangelical priest does not profess to " heal the sick/' " raise 
the dead/' or " cast out devils" — to save the souls of men by a 
consecrated wafer, or by the " water of Baptism but yet he 
retains an undefined reverence for the doctrine of (c Apostolical 
succession/1 and a loyal devotion to " Catholic Christianity" — 
meaning by these professions just so much as will permit him 
to coquet with Dissent, without altogether divorcing himself 
from his " awful, lawful" spouse the Church. 

It cannot be supposed that double-dealing like this will long 
continue to deceive the intelligent, or to satisfy the sincere por- 
tion of the people. When the dust raised by the recent " battles 
of the Churches" shall have subsided, men will begin to see, 
with clearer eyes, into the true merits of a contest in which they 
have hitherto displayed more zeal than knowledge — more of the 
frenzy of party, than of the calm insight of religious philoso- 
phy. They will see in the evangelical protest against " Priest- 
hood" a " delicate device" to secure under false pretences, and 
in a new form, that very spiritual " authority" against which it 
formally protests. The past history of Puritanism at home and 
abroad, will teach men that there is little difference in the prac- 
tical effects on the spiritual freedom of mankind, between the 
doctrines of Geneva and of Rome. That the priestly tyranny 
of Laud may be even favourably contrasted with the treacherous 
and cold-blooded cruelty of Calvin — that they who erected 
May-poles in the villages of England, and filled our churches 
with pictures, may have been quite as tolerant as those who 
mutilated and destroyed them — that they who decked their altars 
with flowers, may have had as much reverence for sacred things 
as those who converted our Cathedrals into cavalry barracks. 
If we are to believe the representations of the " expelled Minis- 
ters," the meek " Wesleyan Conference" not long ago established, 
in the nineteenth century, an actual " Inquisition" in all but the 
u question'-' and the " thumb-screw." 

The great issue to be tried in the present age, however, is 



not one between Puseyite and Puritan — -not even between the 
Popery of Lambetb and the Popery of the Vatican — but between 
the assumed authority of all human priesthoods and Churches, 
and the general conscience of mankind. The whole Christian 
world is on the eve of a contest, not merely of Churches, but of 
'principles. The Reformation was the first hesitating and un- 
certain step on a path of which ages yet unborn will not see 
the end, upon which the world has been loitering, in doubt and 
hesitation, for three centuries, but upon which a strong and ever- 
brightening light is now being thrown by the steady growth of 
human intelligence. We live fast in the nineteenth century, and 
Gervinus, in his great historical work, is fully justified in taking 
the period included between the " Congress of Vienna" and the 
middle of the present century (" a space of time not longer than 
a single human life") as sufficient to occupy the labours of a 
learned life.* Protestantism has been hitherto (to use the lan- 
guage of Parliament) an " organized opposition to Popery," but 
not a " responsible government" for Christian men. It has been 
protesting and obstructive, rather than didactive and creative, and 
the world, somewhat weary of its protests, is beginning to require 
a declaration of its principles. 

Without entering into any detailed discussion of the essential 
doctrinal principles of the Christian Paith, it is sufficiently 
manifest, that no Protestant sect has hitherto succeeded in giving 
it that Catholic character that was evidently intended by its 
Founder. Men may disagree about the cause of this, but of 
the fact there is no manner of doubt. The universality of 
Christian Ethics, and the applicability of Christian doctrine to 
all the conditions of human life, are, indeed, the boast of every 
pulpit ; and so generally is this asserted by believers, that we 
may assume it as a consecrated dogma, that whatever is not 
" Catholic" is not Christian. And yet if we apply this simple 
test of orthodoxy to any Christian Church, its intolerance and 
exclusivenoss are at once fatal to its pretensions. Modern Christi- 

* See G-ervinus 5 " Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth 
Century," Section I. 



16 



anity, so far from being Catholic, exults in its exclusiveness. It 
eschews the common and vulgar instincts of humanity, and 
offers the world a " body of doctrine" so subtle and refined, 
that bishops and councils are needed to expound it, and the 
very ecclesiastical lawyers turn from it in despair. The way 
to heaven, for the time being, often depends on the decision of 
the Bench of Bishops, or a judgment of the " Court of Arches." 
Old gentlemen in Doctors' Commons sit at brood upon our 
sacred mysteries, whilst the Christian public anxiously awaits 
the process of incubation. " The greatest wonder of the age" 
is not the hatching of chickens by steam, but the production of 
pure Christianity in the ungenial atmosphere of Doctors' Com- 
mons. We wait at the doors of the Court of Arches to know 
whether we are orthodox Christians or " pestilent heretics," and 
we accept a " revelation" filtered through the brains of ecclesiasti- 
cal lawyers, and dependent on the dictum of Dr. Lushington ! — 
The Divine oracles of Doctors' Commons, however, are as equi- 
vocal as the " voice of the Church and whilst baptismal re- 
generation is a " Catholic verity" at Exeter, it is the " devil's 
last lie" at Lambeth ! The Bishop of Oxford anathematizes 
the doctrine of the Bishop of Hereford, and the Bishop of Ex- 
eter excommunicates the Archbishop of Canterbury ! 

But, after all the ingenuity of lawyers, and the sophistry of 
theologians, Protestantism continues as it was in the beginning, 
a mere system of negations and protests. Exeter Hall is in 
a state of permanent protest against the natural reason and 
common sense of mankind in general, and against Popery in 
particular ; but when asked to enunciate its own " Catholic 
verities," it has none to offer us but the vaguest abstractions of 
monkish metaphysics, alien to the spirit of the age, and offensive 
or unintelligible to the mass of mankind. Daily and hourly 
are the real antagonisms in the religious mind of the age be- 
coming more marked and more irreconcilable. Oar Oriental 
Revelation, with its cloudy metaphysics, the growth of centuries 
of monkish meditation, becomes daily more opposed (as our 
culture is extended) to the positive and objective tendencies of 
the Teutonic mind. The descendants of the " sea kings/ 5 whose 



1? 



earliest creed was the stern mythology of Scandinavia, have 
little real sympathy with the dreamy sentimentalism of Palestine 
or of Egypt. Our very civilization is fast passing from the 
Christian to the human, where alone can be found the basis of 
" Catholicity." Few laymen know anything of the u theology" 
they profess ; fewer have ever read the " articles" of their creeds ; 
and fewer still comprehend their meaning. Our professed 
religion, I repeat, is alien to our life. 

The present crisis enables us to sound the philosophy and 
study the animus of the popular Protestantism. The convulsive 
efforts of Popery to recover its lost prestige amongst the nations 
of Europe, have stimulated the Protestant sects to a naked 
expression of their true instincts. The " tu-quoque" argument 
is banded about from Puseyite to Evangelical, and from Evan- 
gelical to Puseyite, whilst dissent raves distractedly, being 
unable to discover its proper vocation, suspended between its 
ancient profession of religious liberty, and its hereditary horror 
of the " scarlet abomination." The Puseyite very justly accuses 
the Evangelical of playing fast and loose with the doctrines and 
discipline of Dissent, and of surrendering those sacerdotal pre- 
tensions upon which alone a " visible Church" can be " esta- 
blished of coquetting with " Voluntaryism," and of "muti- 
lating the Prayerbook." The Evangelical, with equal justice, 
accuses the Puseyite of making a (< distinction" where there is 
no " difference" between " High Churchism" and Popery. 
Neither party have the penetration to discover (or, perhaps, the 
honesty to confess) that the real question at issue lies between 
the rights of conscience and the claims of ecclesiastical autho- 
rity. To make the confusion of sects still worse confounded, it 
would be easy to show from the harangues of Protestant hust- 
ings, that beneath all the unction of the Conventicle there lies 
concealed a secret and subtle element of Rationalism which will 
probably assume, hereafter, a more distinct and palpable ex- 
pression. The publication of the " Essays and Reviews" is 
a most significant fact. 

Never, perhaps, in the history of this country, was religious 
anarchy more complete or more universal. The faith even of 

B 



18 



Bishops and Archdeacons is trembling in the balance between 
Canterbury and Rome. The Bishops of Exeter and of Oxford 
have long been " halting between two opinions/'—-" between 
God and Mammon" — illustrating the truth of the gospel say- 
ing as to the difficulty of the rich man entering the kingdom of 
heaven. Mr. Bennett, the rejected of St. Barnabas, remains 
suspended, like Mahomet's coffin, between two magnets — 
attracted towards Anglicanism by the vanity of successful 
schism, and towards Rome by beckoning visions of red stockings 
and a Cardinal's hat. 

To estimate, however, the internal resources which the 
Anglican Church has to oppose to the hostile influences by 
which it is surrounded, let us consider the general character 
and conduct of its clergy, rural and urban, and its actual rela- 
tions to the life and spirit of the age. We will first of all dis- 
miss from the account, as confessedly either useless or dangerous 
to its interests, that very considerable portion of its twenty 
thousand clergy who are notoriously mere traders in its tempo- 
ralities — the younger sons of noble or wealthy families, forced 
into orders to fill a family living, and eke out a scanty provision. 
To this class may be added, those of the middle classes, inspired 
by the same worldly spirit, who are drawn to the Church by the 
same objects that fill the Inns of Court, the Army, and the Hos- 
pitals — the investment of their time and money in a respectable 
and profitable "profession." No one will suppose that either of 
these sections of the Anglican clergy add anything to the spiritual 
strength of the establishment, or give it any real hold on the 
affections of the people. 

We will now turn to those who are really performing, in 
town and country, the established and conventional duties of 
the Priesthood. Of the country clergy a considerable number 
unite in their persons the several characters of the Squire, the 
Magistrate, and the Priest, and, perhaps, are often better known 
on the Bench than in the pulpit — as preservers of game, than 
as Shepherds of souls. The old incumbents of smaller livings 
in secluded places (who in simpler times were the Doctor 
" Primroses" of the Church) are perhaps the most agreeable speci- 



19 



mens of the rural clergy. Their lives are, in general, simple 
and harmless, and if not distinguished by much spiritual insight, 
are often spent in active benevolence and conventional decorum. 
They are not, however, much in contact with the active life of 
their age, and their time is mainly spent in visiting their sick 
neighbours, and tagging together scraps of old sermons. 

The country curate is commonly, at the outset of his career, 
a raw and inexperienced youth, transplanted from the corrupt 
atmosphere of our universities, (having taken his degrees in arts 
and in the vices,) fresh from the billiard tables and stables of those 
rich and luxurious establishments, without any previous education 
that can with any propriety be called religious, unless we are to 
consider such the attendance on a few " Divinity Lectures/' being 
" crammed" with Greek Testament, " Tomlyn's Theology," and 
" Paley's Evidences," and attending the Matins and Vespers 
of his College Chapel — an indecent mockery of public worship. 
Spiritual experiences he has none ; and, of course, a man can 
only to give to others out of the abundance of his own heart. 
By force of character, no doubt, many of the younger clergy 
rise far above the standard I am laying down ; but this is by 
no means an unfavourable average of his class. If there be 
some grave and earnest, there are more utterly frivolous, worldly 
or indifferent. If we meet with the morbid and hectic Evan- 
gelical, who carries gloom and despondency into every house- 
hold, there is also the rude and uncultured High-Churchman, 
who canters his cob (his cover hack, if he be a sportsman) to the 
cottage gate, throws his reins over the paling, and in a few 
bustling moments despatches the dying to their account with an 
" absolution" from the Prayerbook, and washes away the sins of 
the newborn in a cracked slopbasin ! There is no doubt that 
within the last few years these " mutters of routine" are 
managed with more decency than formerly — that the slop-basin 
is often exchanged for the pocket-communion cup, the gift of 
the maiden aunt or doting mother ; but the ceremony itself, in 
all its falsehood and all its Papistry, remains the same. 

But it will, no doubt, be said, that the true strength of the 
Church lies in the zeal and activity of its town clergy, in the 

b 2 



20 



labours of the zealots of orthodoxy, and the zealots of Puritan- 
ism. But with the general suspicion that these men are far 
more anxious to exterminate each other than to preach the 
Gospel of Christ — to make partizans than to make Christians- 
it may reasonably be doubted, whether the Church does not 
suffer more by the scandal than she gains by the controversial 
zeal of the combatants. The public may be amused if not in- 
structed by the clerical stump -oratory of the Stowells and Mac- 
neils, and by the melo- dramatic mummeries of St. Barnabas ; 
and the popular preacher may obtain the kind and degree of 
popularity that is accorded to the popular actor. But even in 
this department of clerical success there is considerable alloy ; 
for the same melo-drame that insures " crowded houses" in the 
aristocratic atmosphere of Belgravia, is hissed and hooted from 
the stage by the rude democracy of St. George's in the East ; 
whilst the star of the polished Macneil pales before the brighter 
light of the vulgar and unlettered SpnrgeonJ 

The follies and inconsistencies of the evangelical clergy are 
fast loosening their hold on the national sympathies. The 
Radical Dean of Bristol, as I have said before, openly denounces 
the whole idea of a c: Priesthood ;"* but the Very Reverend 
Reformer still continues mumbling Matins and Vespers in the 
Cathedral of Bristol ; still continues, I believe, to eat the bread 
of the Church he is betraying. No doubt, the common-sense of 
mankind is equally revolted at the idea of a " spiritual" head- 
ship in Pope or Queen — at the idea of a u sacrificing" or 
" absolving" Priest ; but in discussing these delicate subjects, 
your Evangelical liberal is careful to expose those corruptions 
only which tell against his Puseyite antagonists, and to conceal 
those that bear witness against himself. At the bed-side of the 
sick, the Evangelical Minister either reads the unconditional 
Absolution provided in the Office, or he violates a solemn obli- 
gation by neglecting it. At the font, he categorically pro- 
nounces the (( regeneration" of the baptized, or he mutilates the 
office he has sworn to administer. There is not " rain enough 



* See " Times" report of his speech,. Nov. 23, 1850. 



21 



in the sweet heavens" to wash this stain from his conscience ; 
there are no words in the vocabulary of sophistry and special- 
pleading to reconcile this paltry equivocation with the plainest 
principles of morality. If Reformed Protestantism is to rest on 
such a basis as this, it bids fair to become the most monstrous 
falsehood in modern history. 

As to the Puseyite clergy, they seem to have forgotten at least 
one prohibition in their Prayerbooks, viz. : " that a man shall 
not many his Grandmother." Their devotion to their " mother 
Church/' enthusiastic as it is, yields in intensity to their devotion 
to, what Mr. Roebuck calls, their " grandmother Church/' 
They cannot recognize the voice of God in the world, unless it 
speaks to them in the language of the " Nicene Theology." 
All modern ideas of discipline, order, or ecclesiastical utility are 
submitted to the touchstone of " judicious Hooker/'' Thus 
does the " Past lie upon the Present, like the dead body of a 
giant." These " hidebound pedants" cannot move under the 
weight of " Catholic Antiquity," and have really no faith but 
in traditions and " hearsays." The monks of the Middle Ages, 
we are told, regarded all books on any subject but religion (as 
they understood religion), and even the Creek language itself, as 
the " invention of the devil. 2 ' At the first dawn of learning, 
under Charlemagne, music was strictly confined to the chanting 
in the churches, and astronomy to the calculating of Easter !* 
Our modern monks would, if it were possible, restrict the astro- 
nomy of Newton, and the geology of Murchison, to the scientific 
revelations of Moses. They are eloquent in praise of the 
orthodoxy of Laud, and sigh, no doubt, for the revival of the 
Star Chamber. They would gladly reduce the free thought of 
the nineteenth century to the leading-strings of the seventeenth, 
when women were burnt for witches, and men's ears cropped for 
heresy. • In 1664, Sir Matthew Hale, in delivering a judgment 
on the crime of witchcraft, gave the following reasons for his 
judgment. First, " Because the Scriptures affirm it." Se- 
condly, c< Because the wisdom of all nations, particularly our 

* See Schmidt's " Histoire des Allemands," torn. ii. page 126. 



22 



own, had provided laws against witchcraft." And Sir Thomas 
Brown, the author of " Vulgar Errors/' ! gave a similar opinion. 
Such are amongst the ideal times of the Puseyite clergy — such 
the logic and learning that satisfy a clerical understanding. 
How can these men ever come really in contact with human life in 
the nineteenth century ? A " loving looking back on the past" 
may, indeed, sometimes have its uses ; but it is, after all, on the 
palpitating bosom of the present, that we must spend the pith 
and marrow of our lives. 

The inconsistencies of the clergy, however, may be, after all, 
less fatal to their influence than their fanaticism ; for when men 
become ridiculous, they are not far from being contemptible. 
A laugh is more fatal than logic to empirical pretensions. In 
the most literal sense, the " turning of the tables" has announced 
the discomfiture of Evangelical Christianity. The more respect- 
able performers of the platform, the Stowells and Closes, the 
Cummings and Macneils, were naturally alarmed at the absurdi- 
ties of the table-turning movement, and mildly rejected the 
revelations of Mr. Gillsor/s dining-table. They were evidently 
alarmed lest their craft should be endangered by the public 
ridicule. But we cannot, nevertheless, ignore the fact, that 
Tracts on Table-turning w T ere circulated by tens of thousands 
amongst evangelical Christians. Evangelical crotchets are so 
abundant at the present time, that we labour under a positive 
" embarras des richesses" in selecting the most grotesque and 
the most amusing.* About the "personality of the Devil/ 5 
there appears to be little doubt amongst either orthodox or evan- 
gelical Christians ; and Dr. Vaughan of Harrow has written a 
book in defence of this great " Catholic verity," which is re- 
garded as hardly less important than the Personality of the 
Holy Ghost. The devil is evidently rather a favourite than 
otherwise, in the evangelical theology. His Personality is every- 
where admitted, and the only difficulty appears to be in assigning 
him his proper powers, attributes, and habits. At any rate, it 

# Dr. Livingstone laughs at the South African "rain doctors but 
he forgets that we have some 20,000 " rain doctors" in England, paid 
by the State, and a form of words specially appointed for rain doctoring ! 



us 



is satisfactory to know, on the respectable authority of Dean 
Close, that the devil has not got into the legs of our dining- 
tables. The Bible, we are told, doas not speak positively on this 
awful subject; but in the words of Mr. (now Dean) Close, 
" either keeps silence, or utters an indistinct sound/' The Bath 
luminary, however, rinds chapter and verse in the Bible to justify 
his belief in the " diabolic possession" of his furniture * Let 
grave and thoughtful Englishmen who indolently accept the 
spiritual pretensions of their clergy, read Mr. Gillson's pamphlet, 
and Mr. Close's reply, remembering that the first is an M.A. of 
the University of Cambridge, the author of a " successful" book 
on the " Second Advent," and a popular preacher, — and that the 
last has been recently elevated to the Deanery of Carlisle ! 

Dr. Gumming has, we hear, settled the reign of the Saints, 
" positively for the last time," for the year 1864; but we do 
not perceive that the near approach of that awful event has sen- 
sibly affected the three per cents. One is naturally carious to 
know whether this ingenious and thriving Scotsman has ar- 
ranged his affairs in conformity with the prophetical revelation, 
as no doubt the doctor has his investments to make, and his 
life to insure, like an ordinary Christian. 

I think it is impossible not to discover in these miserable 
displays of folly and fanaticism the legitimate fruits of the pro- 
fessed faith of the Church. They who are taught to believe in 
the literal truth of the legends and miracles of the Old Testa- 
ment, may consistently accept the Bath miracles, on the respect- 
able testimony of Mr. Gillson, supported by that of prominent 
members of his congregation. Surely the testimony of living 
witnesses is better than vague oriental testimony to events four, 
or two thousand years ago. The Spirit in Mr. Gillson's dining- 
table delivered itself, indeed, in a dialect wondrously like the 
stock oratory of Exeter Hall ; but we must not forget that we 
are taught to believe that the divine spirit once condescended 
to use for its manifestation the despised organs of an ass ! The 
arrogance and presumption of the popular evangelical orator are 
absolutely astounding. Whilst proscribing the pride of intellect, 

* See " Table-turning not Diabolic," by the Eev. F. Close, page 3. 



24 



and the vanity of philosophy, he discusses all things in heaven 
and earth with all the authority of inspiration. To him alone 
is the divine law of this mysterious universe revealed in all its 
details. He has " private and exclusive" intelligence of all the 
ordinances of God's Providence. The Past, the Present, and 
the Future are transparent to his deep insight and prophetic 
vision. He sits in judgment on nations and their rulers. No 
event in political or civil life is too large or too small for the 
all- seeing eye of the evangelical seer. Utterly ignorant, in 
general, of science, of philosophy, and history, he sneers at the 
researches of Hamboldt, the learning of Gibbon, and the noble 
life-philosophy of Carlyle, whilst he ignores the metaphysics of 
Locke and of Kant. With his head muddled with " Gorham 
controversies,''' and " Denisori cases" — the intellectual carrion 
of effete monkery — he has commonly all the narrowness of 
Puseyism, without its learning. 

It appears to be a received doctrine in the Evangelical Church, 
that the most effectual means of cleansing our sewers, is by 
national humiliation and solemn fasting. Sour faces and salt 
fish have a peculiar efficacy in deodorizing a dunghill. The 
maxim "aide-toi, et le-ciel faidera" is blasphemous atheism, 
and belongs to the French revolution. The true attitude of 
believers is the folding of the arms and waiting upon Provi- 
dence. By such means has the noble Anglo-Saxon race rMden 
prosperously amongst the nations — founded its Indian empires 
— spread its colonies from the rising to the setting sun, and is 
now about to unite them by the electric wires of science. The 
Papist is ridiculed for exorcising by prayer the devil from the 
neophyte in baptism ; but surely this is not more absurd than 
praying away the cholera, or exorcising a stink. We are living 
under the influence of natural laws, or we are not. We must 
either abandon our science, or amend our religion — there is 
really no alternative. We must accept the facts of natural 
science, or the prophecies of Dr. Gumming, and Moore's Al- 
manack. We must either abandon our belief of the Old Testa- 
ment legends, or logically accept the Popish miracles of " winking 
Madonnas," the liquefaction of St. Januarius 5 blood, and 



25 



the Protestant and orthodox revelations of Mr. Gillson's dining- 
table. But is it really any longer doubtful whether we accept 
the astronomy of Newton or Moses, or are to sacrifice the 
science of geology, or the literal interpretation of the book of 
Genesis ? Let the age answer for itself. 

If we regard the present condition of the dissenting priesthood, 
we shall find little to distinguish it in character and spirit from 
its " Evangelical" prototype. The modem orthodox dissenter is 
commonly a vulgar copy of a Low Church enthusiast. He is a 
keen satirist of our universities, whose honours he professed to 
despise ; but, nevertheless, he purchases a Scotch or German 
degree, and blazons it on the walls in rivalry of his orthodox 
competitor. He ridicules as a " bauble" the mitre of a bishop, 
and walks the streets in a shovel hat ! There is a natural ten- 
dency in religious sects to decline in earnestness and sincerity 
when they have outlived the pressure of persecution. The old 
Puritans had suffered great wrongs, and were inspired with a 
great idea, and suffering and insight are the true parents of 
heroism and of courage. They fought and suffered for liberty 
of conscience, and in such a cause the feeble become strong, the 
timid become brave, and the dull become eloquent. Hence, 
during the great Rebellion, the popular cause was successful, 
both in the senate and the field, and was supported by a powerful 
literature and an invincible army. It was this cause that con- 
verted "a bankrupt brewer of Huntingdon," who could not 
address the Parliament in intelligible English, into a soldier and a 
prophet 3 and at last into the most powerful monarch in Europe j 
and " an army of tapsters and discarded serving-men," into some- 
thing more than a match for the chivalry of an ancient monarchy. 
The heroic loyalty of the Cavaliers was unable to resist " the 
lobster-tailed squadrons" of Cromwell, because the religious idea 
was mightier than the loyal, and because men really in earnest 
about their religion are always invincible. In a religious war, 
the. most sincere is always triumphant— -the advantages of num- 
bers and discipline are neutralized by enthusiasm, and every 
skirmish is a Thermopylae. 

The progress of civilization has gradually removed the causes 



26 

of offence that produced the stern virtues of the Puritans, and 
we are now enjoying the fruits of the heroism and their triumph. 
We are apt to regard the modern Dissenter as, in some sense, 
the inheritor of the virtues of these heroic men, and to give him 
credit for preserving inviolate the sacred heritage of religious 
liberty which they bequeathed to him. But, alas ! if we scan 
the genius, and observe the tactics of modern dissent, we find 
little of the old leaven of Puritanism but its vulgar hatred of 
refinement, its panic terror of Popery (now comparatively harm- 
less), and its rigid doctrinal exclusiveness. Its virtues have all 
disappeared, and little remains of it but its bigotry, its fanaticism, 
and its intolerance — faults comparatively venial in the seventeenth 
century, and in the presence of a still powerful opposition, 
but utterly detestable in the tranquil atmosphere of the present 
time. 

The modern Dissenter in his relations to the national Church 
is much in the position of Gil Bias, when he smelt from outside 
the walls of the Palace the savoury odours of the Archbishop's 
kitchen, and no doubt, like the hero of Le Sage, he will end (if 
he has the opportunity) in taking service in the Archiepiscopal 
scullery. His horror of Episcopacy is, indeed, professedly 
founded on its wealth, its political and social distinctions. He 
edits t{ Black Books" in which Episcopal revenues, doubled in 
amount, are blazoned in capitals and emphasised with marks of 
admiration ; he hunts out, with the keenness of a hungry attor- 
ney, the exact amount of a fine on the renewal of a lease. He 
actually turns sick at the sight of the blazonry on a bishop's 
carriage, and pines away with envy at the sight of the liveries 
and legs of his footmen. He is perpetually proclaiming the 
sourness of the grapes he cannot reach, and ridiculing the dis- 
tinctions for which his soul is sick. He wishes to know whether 
St. Paul was a temporal Baron — whether he drove to church 
at Ephesus in a Long- Acre carriage with a hammercloth — 
whether he had a town and country house, — a cab, a tiger, or a 
French cook ? 

From this constant ridicule of the pomps and vanities of 
ecclesiastical state, one would be prepared to expect that the 



27 

modern Dissenter would be distinguished by the old Puritan 
indifference to them. Now your modern Dissenter is certainly 
not proud of his poverty, of whatever else he may be proud, 
and he is as fond of a title of distinction as a German post- 
mistress. # His contempt for the English universities does not 
extend to the German and the Scotch, which decorate him 
with honorary degrees, and equip him with all the implements 
of a quack. He apes the very dress of the clergy he professes 
to despise. We often meet an "orthodox Dissenter" in the 
streets, " every inch" a bishop, from the hat to the shoe-buckle, 
and wanting nothing but the manners of a gentleman. When 
the English beggar has quite done with his clothes, they go, it is 
said, to the Irish beggar. One would hardly suppose that 
clergymen now- a- days would be anxious to clothe themselves in 
the cast-off rags of the Middle Ages, fairly worn out in the 
service of feudalism and Popery ; and yet we have still honest 
gentlemen amongst us, within and without the Church, who 
are quite ready to become the martyrs of the Cope, the Alb, or 
the Dalmatic. The Protestant Dissenter enters fully into this 
retrograde spirit of the time, even when most loudly protesting 
against it, and is proud to deck himself in the faded finery of 
the apostate Church. The " expelled Wesley an Ministers," who 
were not long ago starring it in the provinces, complain bit- 
terly of the aristocratic habits and fashionable vices of the 
" Conference." This pious and thriving body, it seems, can 
" find no virtue in handicraftsmen," and is perpetually snubbing 
the inspired cobblers and gifted weavers who furnished the 
original bone and sinew of Wesleyan dissent. The meek Fathers 
of the Conference are accused of attempting to establish an 
Inquisition more tyrannous than that of Apostate Rome ! One 
of these itinerant Reformers, in a speech delivered at Bath 5 f 

* The Calvinism of Geneva, despite its democratic pretensions, was, 
according to Gervinus, essentially "aristocratic in principle," and it 
has always continued so. See " Introduction to the History of the 
Nineteenth Century/' page 42. 

f See Report in Bath paper, September 27, 1851. 



28 



complained of members of the Conference "wearing white kid 
gloves" having " ladies hanging on their arms and, in short, 
of adopting the costume and manners of the most ordinary 
Christians, To be sure the stern denouncers of the Conference 
have little or no share in the good things with which their bet- 
ters appear to be making so free, and have, perhaps, to contend 
with the poverty of Job, without his patience. They must be 
regarded as patriots in opposition; and it is just possible that 
patriotism may be " the last refuge of" a hypocrite, as well as 
of a " scoundrel/' 

There are assuredly different phases of modern Dissent, and 
the Independent, the Baptist, and the Unitarian have, perhaps, a 
little more earnestness than the sickly and emasculated Wesleyan. 
But the difference between the various bodies of Dissenters, as 
regards the true principles of toleration, is a difference of degree 
rather than of principle. All, except a few so-called Unitarian 
congregations, are disposed to put down opinion by force, to 
propagate truth by falsehood and clamour, and to submit ques- 
tions of the profoundest philosophical significance to the arbitra- 
ment of a fanatical mob of their own raising. 

These sleek and comfortable Christians, wearing soft clothing, 
living on the fat of the land, and free from all persecution, are 
using in their tirades against Popery the precise language of 
" Kettledrummle" and " Macbriar," who lifted up their voices 
on a hill side, amidst the braying of trumpets, and the din and 
smoke of the battle field ! Comely gentlemen in glossy black 
coats and faultless neckcloths are hurling defiance at the last 
Anti-Christ discovered at Exeter Hall (" positively the last") , 
and heroically challenging the crown of Martyrdom, amidst the 
brandishing of smelling bottles and the waving of pocket- 
handkerchiefs. But it is easy to discover that, after all, it is a 
sham fight, and we may venture to hope that Dr. Cummin g 
may be spared to his country, and Mr. Tresham Gregg escape 
the horrors of the stake. These respectable gentlemen will, 
no doubt, die quietly in their beds at a ripe old age, full of 
years and of honours, and bequeath a comfortable provision to 
their families. Their days will not be spent in holding forth in 



29 



barracks and battle-fields to godly troopers and steel-clad saints, 
but in preaching in well-aired chapels <c to fashionable and 
distinguished audiences." In their days, babies will not be burnt 
in Smithfield, nor will the Papal troops effect a landing on the 
Kentish coast ; Papal dragoons will not be mounted at the 
Horse Guards, nor the Inquisition established at Lambeth. 

I confess that I see very little resemblance between the 
character and circumstances of the present time and those 
" earnest times" to which the Puritan orator is so fond of refer- 
ring. In the days of Cromwell, men actually believed in the 
letter of their religion ; they now, to say the most, only " believe 
that they believe," to use the language of Coleridge, — if even so 
much can be said of this easy-going and thriving generation. 
Modern Puritanism is everywhere found, in the " battle of the 
Churches," on the winning side. It is one of the most thriving 
and profitable adventures in which a man can invest his piety 
or his capital. It is eminently " respectable," and even at times 
somewhat aristrocratic. It is patronized by Lords of the Bed- 
chamber, and smiled upon by Maids of Honour ; Millionaire 
Bankers, and Chairmen of Railways, are subscribers to its 
charities, and speakers on its hustings. To bait the Bishops, 
and abuse the Puseyites, is one of the " fashionable amusements 
of the season" in our watering-places ; and the Evangelical clergy 
of the Establishment are rapidly adopting the tactics, and join- 
ing the march of the Puritan army. In fact, it is pretty clear 
that Evangelical heterodoxy is on the point of falling into the 
arms of orthodox Dissent; and it behoves the sincere and 
honest portion of the English people to consider how they are 
likely to fare in the hands of this piebald spiritual dynasty. 
One thing alone prevents the consummation of this " holy 
alliance" — a difficulty in dividing the spoils of the national 
credulity. Dissent, though she assumes the modesty of a bride 
on the eve of her betrothal, is yet somewhat unromantically 
anxious about her " pin money" and her " dower." Her Evan- 
gelical bridegroom, though eager for her embraces, ungallantly 
reminds her of the lowness of her birth, and the splendour of 
his alliance, as an excuse for the smallness of the " settlement," 



so 



and the shabbiness of the "trousseau.*' If the English people 
have no desire to commit their spiritual concerns to a new des- 
potism, compounded of the Bump of effete Puritanism, and the 
secret traitors of the Anglican Church } let them at once come 
forward and forbid the hanns. 

I trust that in what I have written I shall not be supposed 
to involve in one common accusation the laity and clerisy of 
dissent. The last I believe to be generally timeserving, venal, 
and insincere ;* the former contains within its ranks some of 
the sincerest of modern Reformers, and the noblest of modern 
philanthropists. I am aware that there are thousands of honest 
and upright men in the ranks of dissent, who are there simply 
because they have hitherto found no religious organization more 
advanced ; and who are neither disposed to fall back upon the 
church, nor to sink into atheism. 

A great spirit of revival, which would absorb these men in that 
true " Catholic Union" of which the world is so sadly in want, 
rejecting alike a living and a " paper Pope/' establishing the 
reign of conscience, and the ministry of the intellect, is the one 
great want of this eventful time. Puritanism, once a reality, is 
a reality no longer. It was born of persecution, and nurtured 
amidst heroic conflict. It grew strong and healthy under a 
Spartan discipline. It had to struggle for its life in the (f tented 
field." It had not only to " watch and pray," but to " keep its 
powder dry" It had to oppose the prestige of a powerful mo- 
narchy, the heroism of a chivalrous nobility, and the indifference 
of a godless age. The old Puritan was a man " approved by 
action and by suffering." He had to deal, not only with religious 
dogmas, but with the religious life of man. The modern dissenter 
is a " carpet knight," who defends on paper, or on the platform, 
the cause for which his forefathers bled upon the scaffold and 
on the field. 

* Mr. Henry Rogers, a "Brummagem" Dissenter, is the hack defender 
of Whig orthodoxy in the Edinburgh Review. In 1850 he was employed 
to demolish my " Popular Christianity," which contained the precise 
doetrines of the "Essays and Reviews." In 1861 the Edinburgh 
Review is timidly and tentatively defending the very same doctrine. 



31 



But the^ who have " suffered persecution" do not always 
" learn mercy and the bitterness of a religious contest too 
often survives both the cause that created, and the spirit that 
sustained it. Men still use, as conquerors, the language of the 
weak and the oppressed ; and the war-cry, that was once the 
incentive to the resistance of tyranny, is continued as the apo- 
logy for persecution. Thus the " slave is stung into the en- 
slaver/' and they who have won toleration for themselves, are 
the first to deny it to their vanquished adversaries. That the 
ministers of modern dissent are open to the charge of deserting 
the principles of their forefathers, is abundantly manifest from 
the persecuting spirit they commonly display. We have heard 
these men clamouring for the revival of those penal laws against 
Catholics, which a wise toleration has abandoned, and which 
were only extorted from their ancestors by the fears of a foreign 
invasion, and the probability of a disputed succession. The 
descendants of Cromwell, of Vane 5 and of Milton, after the lapse 
of two centuries, and in tranquil times, appear more terrified by 
the name of Popery than those illustrious men by the living 
reality. They have preserved the bigotry of the seventeenth 
century without its heroism. They combine the effeminacy of a 
refined, with the fanaticism of a dark age. 

Do not imagine, then, oh English people ! that you will gain 
anything by exchanging the priestcraft of the Church for the 
priestcraft of the Conventicle. The difference between the dis- 
senting and orthodox priest is, simply, a difference of circum- 
stances and costume. Their instincts, their principles, and their 
purposes are the same. Both are alike anxious to trade on your 
credulity, and to confine your spiritual growth within the limits 
of their dogmatic creeds. It is in vain that you break the 
bonds of Canterbury and Rome, if you fall into the toils of 
John Wesley or Jabez Bunting— that you protest against the 
Fathers of the Church, and prostrate yourselves before the 
Fathers of the Reformation. Luther foresaw, even through the 
mist of a monkish education, and the influences of a dark age, 
the danger of a " plurality of Popes" in the destruction of the 
unity of the Church. If the Reformation meant anything 



32 



(and crude and imperfect as it was, it had an idea for its basis), 
it asserted the absolute independence of the human soul, as the 
foundation of all individual responsibility. This principle is 
freely admitted in words by the Protestant Dissenter, " Events," 
says the " Protestant Dissenters' Almanack for 1850," " are run- 
" ning on to a blessed consummation. The crisis is at hand. 
" Let us not be impatient. There is nothing hasty, nothing 
" premature in the divine procedure. National establishments 
(( are doomed. Their days are numbered. Antichrist has 
"been smitten with the lightning of heaven, &c, &c, &c. 
"Then cometh the true era, and the blessed conscience will 
" be free. Man will be lifted up and cleaved from the 
corruption of ages ; then will rise up in the world a pure, 
" spiritual, and independent Church, the type of the heavenly 
" and the eternal." Noble words these, (very excellent " pyet 
words }} ), and would be profoundly significant, did we not know 
that they are used merely to round the periods of a popular 
address. 

How can these men believe that " man will be lifted up," 
and the " conscience made free," when they all of them (except- 
ing a few Unitarians) teach every Sabbath day from a thousand 
pulpits, that "Man is a worm, and no man;" that he comes 
into the world accursed — is "unable of himself to help him- 
self," and that all his merit is " in imputed righteousness ;" in 
the belief of historical facts, supported by remote and obscure 
evidence, which he cannot and must not examine, and of monk- 
ish metaphysics which he cannot understand ? How can a 
free conscience be tolerated by men to whom free thinking is a 
synonym for impiety, and a brand of infamy ? Do we not 
know that the " pious" Wesleyan and the " liberal" ' Indepen- 
dent entertain as bitter a hatred of a Unitarian as of a Papist 
• — that it is equally damnable to believe more, and to believe less 
than themselves ? "Who would suppose, in listening to dissent- 
ing tirades against Popery, that the very spirit of Popery — the 
authority of human creeds and confessions of faith, and the 
virtual denial of salvation to all who dissent from them — was as 
strong in the Wesleyan Conference as in a College of Cardinals ? 



33 



If the soul of man is really approaching the era of its emanci- 
pation, and the light of a purer faith is about to dawn upon 
us, the preachers of the " new Reformation" will neither be 
found in the Church nor in the Conventicle. The soldiers of 
the new crusade (which is to rescue the divine wisdom of Christ 
from the hands of the true infidels) will be found amongst those 
whose courage and insight are, at present, exposing them to the 
pedantic criticism of the learned, and to the fanatical hatred of the 
vulgar believer. As in all past ages of revival, seers and pro- 
phets will arise amongst the people, having a true and living 
inspiration, and whose vocation it will be to protest against the 
" lying wonders " of ecclesiastical tradition, and the corruptions of 
priestly fanaticism and imposture. The tradition of more than 
two thousand years, by which the priesthood of India secured the 
victim of the (< Suttee," and filled the coffers of the Church, has 
in this century been broken for the first time, and the light of 
reason and of nature admitted into the dark sanctuary of super- 
stition. European priesthoods have been hitherto content with 
" Suttees" of the intellect, and the martyrdom of the reason 
and conscience of mankind. But their dominion is already 
shaken to its base. The temple of superstition is tottering to 
its fall, and when the time of its visitation shall arrive, not only 
papal tiaras and episcopal mitres, monks' cowls and Anglican 
surplices, but Geneva cloaks, and all the borrowed finery of 
dissent will be found amongst the ruins. 

I have endeavoured thus far to examine the spiritual preten- 
sions of the Anglican priesthood, and the genius of modern 
dissent, in their ordinary manifestations. An isolated section of 
modern priesthood remains to be considered— the section loosely 
described as the i( broad" or liberal" Church, comprising the 
Arnolds and Hares, the Whateleys and Maurices, Baden Powells 
and Rowland William ses, the Hampdens and Froudes, and 
Kingsleys, and a motley multitude of speculative Reformers, and 
dashing brochurists, who, like Mr. Conybeare, are at once faithful 
sons of the Church, and sarcastic critics of its labours and its 
constitution. A few of the clergy are men of science; but when 
such is the case, their clerical are usually merged in the scientific 

c 



34 



pretensions. Dr. Whewell is known by his (i History of the 
Inductive Sciences/' and his " Elements of Morality;" but not 
by his " Sermons." The disciples of his science are somewhat 
staggered by his theology. 

The orthodoxy of the clergy in general, however, is in an 
inverse ratio to its culture, and the writings of the distinguished 
men I have mentioned above, are all, with the exception of the 
last, in the " Index Expurgatorius" of exact orthodoxy, and 
consequently have no very extended influence within the body 
of the Church herself, or amongst her ruling Elders. 

I confess that I have little hope of any vital change in the 
constitution of the Church, or of a more Catholic Theology, 
from the labours either of the " broad" or the " liberal" Clergy. 
By the aid of unimpeachable logic they arrive, in general, at 
the most " lame and impotent conclusions." Dr. Whateley 
frankly confesses that the central idea of Christianity is that of 
a " religion without priests,"* but still continues to administer 
the rite of Episcopal ordination in its papistical form. Dr. 
Hampden exploded his learned battery against the patristic 
theology from his Professorial Chair at Oxford, but has been 
ever since charitably employed in his peaceful seclusion at 
Hereford, in endeavouring to heal the wounds that he inflicted. 
After teaching us that the " doctrines of the Church are 
merely matters of opinion," he allows no variety of opinion on 
the doctrines of the Church. 

The recent most edifying controversy between Mr. Maurice and 
Mr. Mansel, the Bampton Lecturer at Oxford, as to the proper 
limits of religious thought, can only be appreciated by persons 
trained in the theological dialectics, and familiar with the various 
schemes of Christian theology which the fertile imagination of 
Germany has, during the last century, produced for the per- 
plexity of believers. The laity in general, and probably nine- 
tenths of the clergy themselves, have neither the peculiar 
culture, nor the natural power of imagination to rise to the level 
of the metaphysical argument. The general impression produced 



* See Lis ".Kingdom of Christ." 



35 



by the writings of Mr. Maurice (exclusive of that felt by a few 
sentimentalists attracted by his amiability, his learning, and his 
mysticism) is well described by a writer in the " Westminster 
Review" as one of puzzle and disappointment — disappointment 
at a very partial scriptural exegesis, and puzzle at a most 
obscure solution of a theological problem by means of an arbi- 
trary mystical metaphysic— -sensuous Jewish conceptions meta- 
morphosed into German abstractions, and ghosts of Hebrew 
metaphors pursued into the shadowy realms of the uncon- 
ditioned. The writings of his adversary will, I believe, pro- 
duce, at least, as much Pyrrhonism as Faith ; and when men are 
taught that the highest attainments of the spiritualized intellect 
tend only to the confirmation of the dogmas of the Anglican 
Church, they will probably prefer the free exercise of their 
intellects, in their own way, to the trammels of a pedantic and 
mystical orthodoxy. To discuss the question " whether faith 
precedes insight, or insight precedes faith V promises little for 
the settlement of any vital doctrine in the modern Church : for 
the same question, many centuries ago, " amused the learned 
leisure" of Abelard and Anselm.* In spite of all dogmatic 
warnings, the " limits of religious thought" will ever be so co- 
extensive with the limits of imagination. The contemplation of 
the Absolute, the Unconditioned, and the Infinite, excites 
emotions, but does not generate ideas ; and in these shadowy 
regions of the imagination, the educated man will always be his 
own priest and his own philosopher ; whilst the sensual and the 
ignorant will be alternately the victims of the fanatic and the 
empyric. In all countries, I believe, it will be found that the 
Priesthood and its adherents have one dogmatic belief and the 
people another. There is always, more or less, an esoteric and 
exoteric doctrine. A very few ideas, in reality, form the basis of 
creeds ; but the ignorant vulgar rarely embrace any subjective 
belief, and are content to grovel in a material, historical, and 
traditional faith. The history of religion in India, says M. 

* The question was, whether " Fides prsecedit intellectum," or 
" intellectus preecedit fidem." See " JNTeander's Church History." 



36 



Cousin, is " un abrege de Phistoire de la philosophic" The 
religious metaphysics of modern Christianity are poor and 
shallow, compared with the deeper insight of degraded India, in 
the dawn of her history. The Bhagvat Geeta (which Schlegel 
refers to a period anterior to all Grecian speculation) contains 
nearly all the elementary doctrines of Platonism and of Christ- 
ianity, and of every version of each represented in the idealism 
of modern Germany. Every religion in the world has com- 
menced in a mist of metaphysics, and ended in a mixture of 
superstition and materialism, the natural offspring of an esta- 
blished priesthood. The descent from a religion of philosophers 
to that of the people, is a descent from the sublime to the ridi- 
culous, from the spiritual to the sensual. " The Nirvana (anni- 
hilation) taught by Buddha was transformed," says Max 
Miiller, "into a paradise, by the human sympathies of his fol- 
lowers.-"* To establish the Catholicity of any dogmatic creed 
is the fondest of all delusions. The various creeds of mankind 
are but a vague approximation to their religious ideas, and these 
are rude or refined according to the civilization and culture of the 
age that produces them. No man can be said to believe the whole 
of his written creed ; and though an endowed and established 
priesthood may stagnate and putrify on fixed ideas, the general 
tendency of humanity is indefinite growth. All creeds of men 
are but a " feeling after" the absolute under the conditions of 
limited and infinitely various faculties. One man's religion is 
born of fear, another's of gratitude or of love. One man seeks 
the Inscrutable in the deeps of metaphysics, whilst another 
traces the evidence of design and benevolence in the " revela- 
tions of the microscope." 

Instead of wondering that men have invented a hundred 
creeds to solve the mysteries of their being, we should rather 
wonder that they have not invented infinitely more ; and perhaps 
it may be assumed in reality, that there are just as many creeds 
as there are thinkers in the world. The objective and subjective 
tendencies of men's minds are reflected in their creeds. The 



* See (C Buddhism/' p. 48. 



37 



God of Jeremy Bentham was a wise and just Magistrate; and 
his religion was " utility/' and the production of human 
t( happiness." The God of Schiller was the Ideal of Beauty, 
Truth, and Love. The souls of Law and of Behme were satis- 
fied with feeding on the riches and tenderness of the affections, 
transfigured and glorified by transmission through a purified 
and pious imagination ; whilst the African negro has his Fetish 
in a round stone , and the modern fanatic in " a printed book/' 
With practical proof of the absolute infinity, we need not trouble 
ourselves about the orthodox " limits of religious thought." 
The great object of a religious Reformer should be, not so much 
to teach men how to think, but how to live. 

" Grau theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie 

Und grim des Leben's goldener Baum." — Faust. 

How small a surface of human life is really impressed by the 
learned labours of pedantic theologians, who for a thousand 
years have been employed in trimming the trembling balance of 
orthodoxy ! The clever and genial author of " Friends in Coun- 
cil," says of a great statesman, that he would have avoided 
many political blunders if he had ridden more in omnibuses, and 
that an occasional ride in one, from Tyburn gate to the Bank 
and back, would have enlarged his sympathies with, and in- 
creased his knowledge of the national mind. The spirit of this 
remark applies equally to the learned " Pundits" of the Church. 
They, too, are studying the " blue-books" of dead generations, 
and overlooking the common life that surrounds them. Words 
may, sometimes, represent ideas in the vocabularies of religious 
metaphysicians ; but it is more rarely the case with the pious 
laity ; and it is by no means favourable to the interests of 
morality that men should assume a merit in intellectual ortho- 
doxy, irrespective of its moral consequences. It is probable 
that Sir John Dean Paul, who frequently presided at Exeter 
Hall, was as far superior to the generality of London Bankers 
in religious knowledge, so called, as he was inferior to them in 
morality. History confirms what Philosophy might have taught 
us, that no form of dogmatic religion was ever able to check the 



38 



violence of human passion. In the dark and middle ages, men 
honestly believed the doctrines of the clergy as far as they were 
intelligible ; but this belief did not control their passions, or 
purify their minds. The dogmatic creeds of mankind are the 
language of faith without the ideas — the latter being infinite and 
unutterable. 

Properly speaking, objects of faith can never be proper sub- 
jects of discussion. What a man believes, is removed out of the 
province of doubt, which is the foundation of all argument. " In 
"faith," says Goethe, "everything depends on the fact of believ- 
" iiig — what we believe is quite secondary. Faith is a profound 
" sense of security springing from confidence in the All- Powerful 
" Inscrutable Being. The strength of this confidence is the 
" main point. But what we think of this Being, depends on 
" other faculties, or even on other circumstances, and is alto- 
" gether indifferent. Paith is a holy vessel, into which every 
" man may pour his feelings, his understanding, his imagination, 
" as entirely as he can." With all this I entirely agree, except- 
ing that I do not think it "indifferent" what a man thinks of 
his God — whether he regards Him as a " consuming fire," or 
Personified " love." The practical effects of different creeds are 
plain enough in the history of the world. 

I would remind the learned controversialists who are now dis- 
cussing the limits of religious thought, that most Englishmen, 
and especially religious Englishmen, have a natural horror of 
metaphysics. This is, indeed, not a very philosophical, or very 
reasonable aversion ; for properly speaking, religion is based 
entirely on metaphysics, and regards the " evidence of things 
not seen." Poetry and religion are thus far, at least, the same 
— that both are founded on a belief in the metaphysical and the 
unseen.* But theologians should remember that a man is 
neither made a poet nor a saint by instruction. Religion and 
poetry alike, are natural graces of the soul, which may be indeed 

* Most of us must have felt the beauty and truth of Tennyson's lines 
in the " In Memoriam" — 

" We have but Faith, we cannot know, 

" For knowledge is of things we see/' &c, &c. 



39 



cultivated and developed by use., but canuot be created by theo- 
logy or education. The dogmas of religion are simply the 
opinions of those who propound them, and are accepted by others 
with all the qualifications suggested by the individual judgment. 
These abstract dogmas of religion have oftener been the argu- 
ments for persecution than a means of spiritual instruction. It 
cannot be pretended that these learned subtleties ever have 
reached, or ever will reach, the common heart of mankind, ov 
that popular ethics have ever been based on the metaphysics of 
the schools. 

I repeat that I have little hope of any important religious re- 
formation from the labours of the " broad" Church, or even 
from those of the so-called " Liberal" clergy. All, in different 
ways, appear to be labouring rather to force their advanced 
opinions into the existing system of the Church, than to raise 
the Church to the level of their convictions. It is a poor service 
to the cause of truth to endeavour to "reconcile" the science of 
Moses with the science of Newton— to allegorise the legends of 
the Old Testament in the lecture room, and inculcate their literal 
meaning in the pulpit. No healing can come from this " palter- 
ing in a double sense" with the facts of history and the discoveries 
of science. They alone are the true Priesthood of any age, who 
have the intelligence to apprehend, and the courage to declare 
the whole truth attained in their generation, and who really 
influence its mental and moral culture. This function is now 
being performed, however imperfectly, by a free press, and the 
assumptions of the modern Priesthood are, at once, an anachron- 
ism and an usurpation. 

I have attempted, in what I have written, to review the various 
fields of clerical activity, and to show that the labours of the 
modern Priesthood are alien to the spirit of the times, and un- 
acceptable alike to the educated and uneducated sympathies of 
the people at large. I assert, emphatically, that the modern 
Priest has ceased to be the real instructor of the people, that his 
flock is actually flying from him, and that he has to pursue it 
into the lecture room, and even into the streets.* A mere glance 

* The Bishop of London has recently been preaching in the streets, 



40 



at the historical development of the Christian Priesthood will 
show the insecure foundation on which it rests. The modern 
Priest is the creature of the Aristotelian, whilst the modern 
schoolmaster is the offspring of the Baconian philosophy; so 
that a perpetual antagonism exists, and must continue to exist, 
between the intellectual culture and religious faith of the people. 
The more men know of the facts, material or moral, of the uni- 
verse, the less will be their faith in the empirical teaching of 
the Church. It is a true presentiment of coming events that 
inspires the fears of a writer like Isaac Taylor,* lest the progress 
of physical science should destroy the objective forms of a reli- 
gion founded on miracles, prophecy, and scholastic theology. 
When men have once learnt from the inductive philosophy to 
observe, and to interrogate nature for themselves, and to interpret 
natural laws, material and mental, the creeds of the Churches 
will become incredible to them, and their teachers ridiculous. 
The Baconian philosophy, once diffused, and carried to its legiti- 
mate issues, will destroy, at least, the physical supernaturalism 
of the Churches ; though it will by no means diminish the 
" transcendent wonder" (which is the source of all religion), the 
" reverence and godly fear" of mankind for the unseen and in- 
scrutable cause of all things. The great innovators in science, 
and apostles of knowledge (in all ages the victims of the Priest- 
hood), have not been distinguished for their irreverence. Des 
Cartes and Bacon, Kepler and Galileo, f Newton and Spinoza, 
and all the great lights of the bygone ages, were as devout as 
they were profound in their intellectual conceptions of nature 
and of God : though it is probable that they had little real rever- 
ence for the objective forms of the popular religion. We need 
not fear that the religious instincts of mankind will ever perish 
from the increase of knowledge. All that science will do for 
them, will be to make them more intelligent, more enlarged, and 
more tolerant. 

During the dark ages Aristotelian science and Aristotelian 

* See his " Eestoration of Belief." 

f Galileo's penance for his discovery, was to say the seven penitential 
psalms at the foot of an ignorant monk ! 



41 



theology grew side by side, and the same empiricism that pro- 
duced a search after the philosopher's stone, and the idea 
of the transmutation of metals, &c, produced the scholastic 
theology. Soon after the revival of learning, the Baconian 
philosophy superseded the Aristotelian in the department of 
science ; but theology still remained on its old Aristotelian 
foundation. How intimately the quackeries of science were 
connected with the quackeries of priesthood is proved by the 
clearest historical evidence. Henry the Sixth, the weakest of 
English monarch s, actually issued four decrees in 1423, sum- 
moning all nobles, professors, doctors, and clergymen to devote 
themselves to alchymy, and the transmutation of metals. " The 
clergy" said the king, " should engage in the search for the 
philosopher's stone ; for since they could change bread and wine 
into the body and blood of Christ, they must, by the help of 
God, be able to transmute the baser metals into gold I 39 * This 
royal reasoning would, now-a-days, perhaps, hardly convince the 
most zealous of our Puseyite clergy — the Reverend Bryan King, 
or the Bishop of Brechin ; though the latter (in the year of 
grace 1860) was called upon to answer for the heresy of sacra- 
mental " transmutation " I presume, however, that this learned 
churchman has abandoned the search for the philosopher's 
stone. These men are the true descendants of those who be- 
lieved in " judicial astrology," in chiromancy, and in the 
cabala, and who cured diseases by holy water, amulets, and 
relics. The " ars disputandi" of the Church was a perpetual 
obstacle to the progress of the intellect ; and the foregone con- 
clusions of the Priesthood were a dead weight on human intel- 
ligence. " How," it was asked, " could the earth be round, 
when it is said in the Psalms* ' that the heavens were 
stretched out like a garment V "f In short, it is not too much 

* See Liebig's " Familiar Letters," p. 49. Spinoza, the " G-ott- 
getrankener mann" of the pious Novalis, is still regarded as an Atheist 
by the modern clergy, and the discoveries of Dr. Buckland were equally 
atheistical to them. 

f I commend the following questions, once popular in the Church, 
to the attention of the Puseyite clergy : " Whether the angels spoke 



42 



to say, that during the prevalence of Church logic and Aristo- 
telian philosophy, the avenues of every science were blockaded 
by the Bible ; nor is there any doubt, that every honest and 
consistent Priest in the modern Church is as anxious as his 
mediaeval prototype to limit the teaching of science to the letter 
of Scripture. The intimate connection of clerical and scientific 
ignorance, and their connected fortunes, is proved by the singular 
fact mentioned by Liebig, viz., that a few years after Luther 
burnt the Papal Bull at Wittenberg, Paracelsus, at Basle, com- 
mitted to the flames the works of Galen and Avicenna !* It was 
Paracelsus who established the true medical doctrines of salva- 
tion by opium, and justification by mercury! 

Whilst I thus criticise the pretensions of modern Priesthood, I 
shall, no doubt, be reminded of the vast and increasing religious 
organization and clerical activity by which the age is said to be 
distinguished — of our abounding charities and missionary zeal. 
But I utterly deny that the clergy, as such, are the principal or 
primary agents in these philanthropic movements. They are 
the signs, not so much of the extension of the popular religious 
faith, as of the progress of an enlarged, if not, very enlightened 
humanity. Men of all religions, and of no religion, take part in 
these works of charity and of mercy. Laymen are in general 
the real apostles of the new movement. It is they who have 
founded our ragged schools, our city missions, and our Refor- 
matories. A fashionable novelist (like Mr. Charles Dickens), 
by painting with a master-hand the ignorance and heathenism, 
the degradation and suffering of the poor, is the true author of 
such works as these, to which the clergy, at last, gave their lag- 
gard and reluctant assent. Lord Shaftesbury is our real Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury ; and has more to do with the so-called 
religious movements of the age than the whole bench of bishops. 

Greek or Hebrew ?" " Whether it is lawful for a man to swallow his 
oTrn spittle during a fast ?" " Whether animal or vegetable oil are in- 
different on a like occasion P" " Whether there existed in Paradise 
before the fall, the usual excrements of the human bouv ?'' Such 
questions as these might be multiplied by hundreds. 
* Liebig's " Familiar Letters," p. 81, 82. 



43 



It is he who preaches " justification by faith" to battalions of 
shoeblacks, and the " beauty of holiness" to repentant ticket- 
of-leave men, whilst the clergy proper are squabbling about the 
" apostolical succession" and the " limits of religious thought." 
The clergy, in fact, are everywhere found following timidly, 
rather than leading boldly the really religious movements of the 
age. Even in the recent religious " revivals," as they are 
called, a Quarterly Reviewer notices " the extensive employ- 
ment of the lay element in prayer meetings and if this 
spiritual Celtic fever has also its ludicrous and contemptible 
symptoms in the " public prayers and preachings of women and 
children," in the confusion of " hysterics" with " conversion," 
" in terrible scenes in which the eyes and ears were assailed by 
sights and sounds not to be described," young girls scream- 
ing and tearing their hair for hours at a time, — we may attribute 
the movement, with all its good and evil consequences, rather 
to the laity than to the clergy. When " a timid little girl of 
ten years of age is asked to relate her experiences to forty 
people," we may surely suppose that the time has arrived 
when " out of the mouths of babes and sucklings strength" is 
ordained, and that Ireland is about to become really the " Isle 
of Saints." The Bishop of Down, indeed, acknowledges and 
blesses f< the great and holy work that is leavening his 
diocese,"f hysterics and all, and his clergy bear witness to its 
" moral" effects ; but neither bishop nor clergy lay claim to the 
honour of having produced this Hibernian outpouring of the 
Spirit. The pious learned appear to be in doubt whether it is 
to be attributed to disease, the Devil, or the Holy Ghost (see 
the Discussions of Quarterly and Westminster Reviewers) ; the 
former being the most reasonable, and, therefore, the least ac- 
ceptable hypothesis. The Protestant horror of scarlet is noticed 
by Dr. Hecker, as distinguishing the dancing maniacs of the four- 
teenth century as well as the <c converted" Orangeman of the 
nineteenth ; but the priests of the former period, instead of 

* See " Quarterly Review," No. 213, p. 167. 
f Id. ibid. p. 166. 



44 



blessing, were more generally employed in exorcising the spirit 
in the " converts. "* 

Such, then, is modern (( Sacerdotalism" all over the world, 
and such its acknowledged antagonism to the spirit of the 
times. Sir David Brewster, indeed, fondly contrasting the 
" pious frauds" of the middle ages with the integrity of the 
modern clergy, tells us that " the modern minister of religion 
now asks no other reverence but that which is inspired by the 
sanctity of his office and the purity of his character : J 't but 
surely he knows well enough that the Altar and the Pont in the 
Christian Churches are still the theatres of superstition and 
imposture ; that the remission of sins is effected by consecrated 
water, and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the imposition of 
hands. The action of the Priesthood in matters of science 
is at once destructive of all honest inquiry and all inductive 
progress. 

But the people of all countries are beginning to require a 
creed that is in keeping with their actual intelligence, and in 
unison with their present culture. Neither the gospel of 
Popery, of Puseyism, nor of Protestantism, in any of its existing 
forms, is acceptable to the awakened intelligence of the educated 
classes, or to the down-trodden instincts of the masses. Reli- 
gion supposes the free exercise of all the faculties of the mind 
and heart, the free culture of the intellect and the affections. The 
unbelief of which we hear so much, is not unbelief of the pri- 
mary and essential principles of religion, but of the corrupt and 
incredible systems, that, whilst they profess to represent, entirely 
pervert them. The instinct of " reverence for what is above 
us" — so nobly expounded by Carlyle — of reverential awe in the 

* See Hecker's " Epidemics of the Middle Ages," p. 82. " The 
Dancing Mania." " They (the dancing maniacs) were still more irritated 
at the sight of red colours, the influence of which on the disordered 
nerves might lead us to imagine an accordance between this spasmodic 
malady and the condition of infuriated animals.'" Probably the red 
stocking of a cardinal might produce similar convulsions, if suddenly 
exhibited to Mr. Spooner. 

f See " Letters on Natural Magic," p. 57, chap. iv. 



45 



presence of invisible and Almighty power, is that upon which 
all religions are founded, and this is indestructible in the human 
heart. The unbelief of the age is unbelief in the moral anoma- 
lies and contradictions, the distorted history and perverted 
science of theological systems. Men are impatient of being told 
that they must believe literally in every legend of the Old 
Testament, whilst they are forbidden to believe in the modern 
miracles of the Church, established by abundant testimony, and 
received by the largest half of Christendom — that Oriental 
evidence 5000 years old, is more trustworthy than the evidence 
of living witnesses ; that the Popish " Church" alone is capable 
of " pious fraud," or pious credulity ; and that the Popery of 
Protestantism alone is infallible and uncorrupted. 

The people assuredly have little faith, and will have less as 
their education is extended, in such a " religion" as this. They 
do not believe, whatever they may profess, that God has given 
them a " revelation" as a perfect and infallible life-guidance, 
which wrangling priests can alone make dimly intelligible to 
them. They do not believe, and never will again believe, that 
the great spiritual law of man's life depends for its interpretation 
on the acumen of ecclesiastical lawyers, or the decrees of eccle- 
siastical synods — whether they be held at " Nice," at " Trent," 
at " Westminster," or at " Lambeth" — that the faith of a man's 
soul is a " tradition" of the Church, and not a divine and " un- 
speakable gift" — the common heritage of all 'mankind. They 
do not believe that God is cruel, or unjust, or the author of dis- 
order, in a world the essential idea of which is order. If unbe- 
lief in the "doctrines" of the Church, which it is itself unable 
to expound — if the rejection of the merely historical pretensions 
and traditions of a corrupt corporation, which sinks in the esti- 
mation of mankind with the progress of intelligence — if this be 
unbelief, the world is assuredly far gone in infidelity. 

The recent appearance of the "Essays and Reviews," which have 
openly assailed the very foundations of the popular Christianity 
by the mouths of its anointed teachers, is a fact significant of 
the spiritual tendencies of the age. A precisely similar move- 



46 



merit appears to be taking place on the continent of Europe, 
and efforts are being made to establish a freer and more expan- 
sive theology by M. Scherer, at Geneva ; M. Colani, at Strasburg ; 
M. Reville, at Rotterdam; M. Scolten,at Leyden; and M. R£nan, 
at Paris. Nay, Popery itself is in arms against the monstrous pre- 
tensions of Sacerdotalism. The Benedictines of Monte Casino, 
La Cava, and Subiaco, who rival, or perhaps excel in learning, 
the clergy of our English Universities, and far exceed them in 
piety and simplicity of life — the Capuchins who minister to the 
instincts of the poorer portion of the Catholic laity, as the Bene- 
dictines to those of the more educated and intellectual classes, are 
alike protesting against the arrogant assumptions of the priesthood. 
The mitred Abbot of Monte Cassino is an object of suspicion 
to Bourbon Churchmen, and Father Tosti, the most eminent 
monk of the order, has actually been driven into exile on account 
of the liberalism of his opinions. The Dominicans, who repre- 
sent the purely theological developments of Popery, and whose 
labours are conspicuous in the " Sant' Uffizio" — even these so- 
called orthodox priests are found protesting against the doctrine 
of Papal infallibility. They opposed the doctrine of the Im- 
maculate Conception, and quoted Thomas Aquinas against Pio 
Nono. It is a curious fact, that the same Dominican convent 
(that of San Marco, at Florence) which sheltered the illustrious 
Savonarola, whose memory is still revered by the monks, should 
still be the nursery of liberal opinion in the Church of Home. 
In spite of their Catholic sentiment, we find Rosmini, and Ghio- 
berti, Lamennais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert, all more or 
less addressing themselves to the popular and democratic element 
in the Church. 

Dr. Dollingen, in his lectures delivered at Munich, openly 
declares against the temporal power of the Pope, and this man 
is regarded as the most distinguished expounder of Catholic 

* See " The Progress of Religious Thought, as illustrated in the 
Protestant Church of France, being Essays and Reviews bearing on 
the chief Religious Questions of the Day," translated from the French 
by Dr. Beard. 



47 



theology, whilst his ecclesiastical history is a text-book in Catholic 
universities. In North America the same tendencies are every- 
where observable in the Catholic Church. 

If we contrast this young and vigorous literature with the dull 
and dreaiy fanaticism, the shallow hermeneutics and captious 
criticism of the orthodox priesthood, we can have but little 
doubt, in the present age, of the ultimate results of the contest. 
The quarrel between the advocates of what may be loosely called 
an intellectual and spiritual religion, is probably as old as the 
history of religion and philosophy, and, no doubt, had its origin 
in the diversities of human temperament, We shall, perhaps, 
learn at last that there is nothing " common or unclean" in sin- 
cere human thought — that man's true life is altogether divine — 
that his highest convictions are a revelation to him, even 
though they want the imprimatur of Priests. Looking at 
the conflicting religious opinions of earnest and devout men, it 
seems evident that the first step towards the establishment of 
any solid basis of human belief, is to ascertain the proper facul- 
ties to be used in the enquiry, and the limitations under which 
they must be exercised. The spiritual faculties, without the 
guidance of the intellect, are liable to fanaticism, and the un- 
chastened intellect too often degenerates into impiety. Our 
second-rate men of science are often materialistic and irreverent, 
whilst our greatest discoverers have lifted the veil of nature with 
trembling hands. The highest and noblest exercise of the intel- 
lect involves the recognition of the spiritual faculties, and yet 
the intellect may be cultivated to a high degree, whilst utterly 
ignoring them. The French encyclopedists of the last century 
succeeded in throwing down the old idols by mere force of intel- 
lect, but their influence on religion proper was merely negative. 
As they left behind them no intelligible basis for human faith, 
we now find the old altars repaired, and the old superstitions 
revived. It is clear that a merely intellectual religion made no 
lasting impression on a nation which arrogates to itself the first 
place in European civilization. Those original elements of the 
human soul, Awe, Wonder, and Reverence, still remain to us, 



48 



after Philosophy and Philosophism have done their best and 
their worst to destroy them. 

No existing form of Protestantism has yet acquired or deserved 
the character of a Catholic creed. None has yet ever had the 
courage to accept the legitimate conclusion that logically follows 
from its essential principle the right of private judgment. The 
very name of Protestantism, as it is said, is a negation. To 
find the true bases of human belief, we must return once more 
to nature and her " eternal verities" (on which all faiths of men 
were, at least, originally founded), and not to the garbled and 
second-hand reports of pedantic theologians. The soul of man 
in the nineteenth century is, at least, as capable of expounding 
its faith as it was in the first, the third, or sixteenth, if we had but 
equal sincerity, and equal courage. The true faith of mankind 
is, as Carlyle tells us, not what they profess, but what they be- 
lieve, and this was never more difficult to discover than at the 
present time. That men do not believe, in general, what they 
dogmatically profess, is evident from the wild warfare of sects 
that is raging around us : for the very essence of a true faith is 
calmness and repose. Men do not contend furiously for self- 
evident verities, or for doctrines that are really Catholic. 

The actually retrogressive tendencies of modern sacerdotalism, 
may be inferred from the fact, that 600 years ago, we find a 
Pope (Clement the Fourth) defending the liberal studies of Roger 
Bacon, the very basis of our experimental philosophy, against 
the ignorant bigotry of the clergy ; whilst in the nineteenth cen- 
tury we have another Pope inaugurating the doctrine of the 
immaculate conception, and defending the miraculous liquefac- 
tion of St. Januarius'' blood ; and the Protestant monks of Oxford 
proscribing the geology of Buckland, the physiology of Combe, 
and the noble and really Catholic spiritualism of Carlyle. The 
publication of new truth, or, more strictly speaking, the revival 
of that which is eternal, has, in all ages, to encounter the same 
fortune, and to meet with the same opposition. The " people 
hear it gladly," but the " scribes and pharisees" — the sophists 
and the hypocrites, are always ready to blaspheme the doctrine, 
and to revile the teacher. Again and again we have " Christ 



49 



disputing with the doctors/' and Socrates contending with the 
"sophists." The preacher of the " words of truth and sober- 
ness" is for ever regarded by the fanatic and the formalist as 
the " setter forth of strange Gods," and the inspired thinker as 
"possessed with a devil." The "crown of thorns" is, in some 
sense or other, the common lot of those who see beyond the 
outward shows of things into their spirit, and meaning — 

" Die wenigen die Was davon erkannt, 
Die tkoricht genug ibr voiles Herz iricht wahrten, 
Dem Pobel ihr Gefiihl, ilir Sehauen offenbarten, 
Hat man ron je gekreuzigt und verbrannt." — Faust. 

Christianity, as taught by its founder, and before it was ex- 
pounded by "church literature'' and embodied in a pedantic 
"theology," was essentially an appeal from " authority " to 
"Faith" — from "tradition" to " conscience." In the hands 
of Priests it has again fallen back into the original corruption, 
and enveloped in a cloud of supernaturalism, become once more 
a mystery of Priestcraft. Again, the " word of God," the great 
unwritten word, is " made of no effect by their traditions/' and 
again in the nineteenth century, the language of Christ protesting 
against the "established religion" of his country, rises naturally 
to the lips of the reformer. Every discovery of any value to 
mankind has still to struggle for its life with the ignorance, the 
fanaticism, and the avarice of Priests. Dr. Jenner was once brand- 
ed as Antichrist in the London pulpits, and the use of chloroform 
to mitigate the pains of childbirth is even now being denounced 
by the clergy as an impious interference with the primal curse ! 

The literature called forth by the present agitation in the 
Church, and by courtesy called " religious," is, I believe, the 
feeblest, the most motley, and the most unscrupulous ever pro- 
duced by despairing fanaticism and discomfited orthodoxy. The 
flames of martyrdom have long been extinguished by the pro- 
gress of civilization, and the actual " baptism of fire" is no 
longer possible ; but the pen, 

" That mighty instrument of little men," 

is still a powerful means of social martyrdom and pious per- 

D 



50 



sedition. In the pulpit, and on the platform. (i the pious" 
orator is still able "to strike with his tongue most serpentlike;''' 
to make the temple of God a place of refuge for the common 
stabber of reputations, and the Bible-meetmg the sanctuary of 
the slanderer. Xot content with the stereotyped expedient of 
appealing to " judicious Hooker. " " our old English divines/* 
and " Catholic antiquity'" in their crusade against all new 
thought, and all advanced criticism in matters of faith : the 
Scribes and Pharisees of the modem Church endeavour to 
blacken the reputation for piety and learning of men immea- 
surably their betters in purity of life and intellectual culture. 
They remind me of certain rlsh. which when pursued by their 
enemies have the power of emitting from their gall-bladder a 
fetid discharge, which answers the double purpose of muddying 
the water and driving off their pursuers by its evil odour. 

But the literature of Priests is. at least, as contemptible as it 
is unscrupulous. A glance at the advertising columns of the 
newspapers will enable us to form a tolerable estimate of the 
general character of our theological literature, dissenting and 
orthodox, and show us how little relation it bears to the actual 
life of Englishmen in the nineteenth century. Here we have one 
<( learned Theban'"' discussing the personality of the Holy Ghost 
— another the Personality of the Devil, and a third the K effects :) 
of infant baptism. The Kev. G. I. Faber advertises a book to 
show us that Napoleon the Third is the (< seventh head of the 
beast'"' mentioned in the Revelations.* Dr. Cumming (whose 
writings are more advertised than HoUoway's Ointment or Parr's 
Life Pills) has discovered, in the same mysterious volume, that 
<c Rome will be destroyed by fire from heaven, or swallowed up 
" by earthquakes, or overwhelmed with destruction by volcanoes, 
" as the visible punishment of the Almighty for its Popery." 
The Doctor (having apparently exhausted all telling topics since 
that event) has recently produced a book on " the World before 
the Flood." 

* Ir appear?., from Xeanders Church History . vol. i. p. 137. that learned 

theologians have been arranging the seven heads of the Beast eyer 
since the days of Sevo. who was one of the first. I am glad to find 
that Louis Napoleon is " positively the last." 



51 



" Salvation, and the Way to procure it, price 6d.," by the 
Rev. A. M. Brown, LL.D., is the actual title of a sermon now- 
lying before me, by a popular dissenting minister of Chelten- 
ham. " Rheumatism Cured for a Shilling/' and " Salvation 
Secured for Sixpence/' jostle each other on the same page. " Ten 
Minutes' Advice on the Care of the Teeth," and " Five Minutes' 
Advice on the Care of the Soul," stare us in the face on the 
same wall. Is there any real difference in the animus of the rival 
empirics ? Every wall is a-flutter with advertisements of clerical 
oratory, and every printshop alive with portraits of fashionable 
preachers. The very" windows speak." We see, side by side, in 
the same printshop, a figurante pirouetting in short petticoats, and 
a favourite preacher smirking in full canonicals; Power's Greek 
slave "in puris naturalibus/' and Dr. Macneil in the attitude of 
prayer. Taglioni balancing herself on one toe, and Father Ga 
vazzi "attitudinizing" in the costume of a Barnabite monk! 
All our religious activities reflect the sloppy character of our 
" pious" literature. It was once a vital question amongst con- 
tending fanatics whether Dr. Achilli was to be canonized as a 
saint, or execrated as a satyr. Religion has become a fashion- 
able amusement in all watering-places, and the slip-slop of the 
drawing room is flavoured with the slip-slop of the Conventicle. 
" Serious" lieutenants in the navy, and pious cornets of dra- 
goons, take the field against the Bishop of Exeter ; and Sir 
Culling Eardley and Lord Shaftsbury are deeper in the Fathers 
than Dr. Pusey himself. The last new polka, and the last book 
on prophecy — Dumas' last novel, and Dr. Gumming' s last lec- 
ture are equally attractive, and the same " fair saints," redolent 
of perfumes, and fluttering with finery, are found at the Bible 
meeting and in the ball-room.* In short, everybody but the 
people is busy in the cure of souls. The people alone have 
nothing to do with the popular religion. 

In the 14th Number of the "Journal of Sacred Literature" 
are two articles, (one most elaborately written, and richly em- 

* Poor Hood was quite right in saying that there are two kinds of 
piety in the world — piety proper, and magpie -tj. 



52 

bellished with Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac quotations) the first 
" on the words heard by Paul in Paradise," and the other on 
Paul's thorn in the flesh — matters, we are gravely assured, 
" of high and curious interest." Nearly all the names illus- 
trious in Church polemics are dragged into these " interesting" 
papers, which we presume are read by the writers themselves, 
and the little circle of pedants in which they revolve, and care- 
fully eschewed by everybody else. The amount of piddling 
criticism, small second-hand learning, miserable word-juggling, 
and pompous pedantry collected together in these two papers 
(worthy of Mr. Henry Rogers himself), can only be conceived 
by those who have been able to keep themselves awake to the 
end of them. The speculations on the subject of " Paul's thorn 
in the flesh" are too curious to be passed over without notice, 
and they lie conveniently for quotation at the commencement 
of the article (page 449). 

" Not a few commentators," says our learned Pundit, " have 
puzzled themselves about the thorn in the flesh, referred to by 
the Apostle Paul, as the messenger of Satan sent to buffet 
him. The difficulty has been to ascertain with certainty what 
the Apostle means by it, audit may be doubted whether this 
can be wholly overcome. It were tedious to enumerate all the 
opinions on the subject" (Heaven forbid) ! " Tertullian thought 
it meant the ear-ache or head-ache, Jerome the head- ache : good 
Richard Baxter fancied it must have been the stone, by 
which malady he himself was affected. The most whimsical 
opinion I know, is that of Teller in his ' Worterbuch ' — 
( Eine figurliche Beschreibung der reissenden Gicht besonders 
Kopftgicht-migvsLine,' (a figurative description of racking (/out, 
especially head-gout — migraine). Dr. Doddridge, adopting 
the opinion of Whitby, thinks that the view he (the Apostle) 
had of celestial glories affected the system of his nerves, in 
such a manner as to occasion some paralytic symptoms, and 
particularly stammering in his speech, and perhaps some ridi- 
culous distortion in his countenance," &c«, &c, &c. 

Now we will not presume peremptorily to decide (where so 
many doctors disagree) whether the Apostle had the ear ache, 



53 



the toothache, the stone, paralysis, or gout ; bat, considering 
the prevalence of the last-named complaint m some of our 
Cathedral cities amongst "the descendants of the Apostles," 
I would venture to suggest that this might possibly have been 
the complaint of the Apostle of the Gentiles. If Englishmen 
in the nineteenth century are not satisfied with this kind of 
religious literature, it must, I fear, be concluded that their minds 
have been corrupted by the audacious criticism and godless 
philosophy of Germany. 

Such is the religious literature, and such are the religious 
activities amidst which the " Essays and Reviews" have fallen 
like a thunder-clap in a sultry atmosphere. |It was not to 
be expected that the announcement of a new religious philoso- 
phy, threatening the utter destruction of the effete traditional 
theology, would be received with a good grace by those whose 
craft it endangered. Coleridge, indeed, had from his Olympian 
heights shed a " dim religious light'' on the decaying Churches, 
but from a want of consistency and sincerity of purpose, it had 
produced nothing but abortive Puseyism, and clumsy imitations 
of German romanticism. The " Essays and Reviews" seem, 
at least, to have some pretensions to clearness of purpose, and 
frankness of expression — an unusual phenomenon in clerical litera- 
ture. There is something tragi-comic in the manner of their 
reception by the orthodox clergy ; but I am afraid the irreverent 
laity are more inclined to laugh at, than to sympathise with the 
throes and agonies of Convocation, and the painful incubation 
of the Bench of Bishops. It seems clear that the obstetric 
aid of the old gentlemen in Doctors' Commons must again be 
invoked to assist the labour of Mother Church. The Convoca- 
tion appears utterly eonfounded at the suddenness of the blow, 
and the direction from which it comes—from members of their 
own body. It is like a hen, which having produced a duckling, 
sees with terror and dismay its disnatured offspring plunging 
into a strange element, whilst she herself stands screaming and 
fluttering on the bank. 

But I conclude, as I commenced, these pages by once more 
calling the attention of educated laymen to the actual position 



54 



of the Priesthood and the People. We do not sufficiently con- 
sider, in this nineteenth century, the total change that has taken 
place in their relations towards each other. The chanee has 
been so gradual and the means by which it has been effected so 
various, that we find ourselves in a new era without any clear 
understanding of the path we have been travelling, or the goal 
at which we have arrived. The literature of the last three cen- 
turies has been steadily vindicating the right of private judg- 
ment j and though the Protestant Church has been feebly and 
hesitatingly protesting against the abuse of the principle, and 
the Romish Church against the principle itself, it has, never- 
theless, firmly established itself in the minds of the educated 
laity. The doctrine of the " Oxford Tracts" as to the authority 
of the Priesthood, is really accepted only by a small part of the 
clergy themselves, and the signal failure of the Tractarian move- 
ment has exposed the desperate condition of orthodoxy at least. 
The fast and loose tactics, and semi-rationalistic concessions of 
the evangelical clergy, within and without the Church, are but 
a (C tub thrown to the whale" that threatens to devour them. 
The time is not far distant when the clergy, dissenting and 
orthodox, must either Jaecorne the reflectors of the highest culture 
of their age (the only real basis of their authority in all history), 
OL- sink into utter insignificance. A trne Priest is one who has 
a clear insight into the spiritual character of his age, who is able 
by power of intellect, and the innate graces of his mind, to inter- 
pret, and by force of character to direct it, whilst the false one 
is content to pander to its credulity, and trade in its supersti- 
tions. 

In every age of the world, its spiritual forces, that is, its 
highest thought, will be found, in the ultimate analysis, to have 
been the source of its virtual religious government. In the 
middle ages, when the monastery was the only asylum of learn- 
ing, and the only laboratory of science, the monk was the natural 
and proper instructor of the people, for he alone had the " spiritual 
power" which is the true foundation of <( authority." In modern 
times, our miscellaneous literature — the daily paper—the weekly, 
monthly, and quarterly magazine, have superseded the obsolete 



55 



and superannuated literature of the clergy. Does the really 
cultivated man seek for spiritual assistance from the clerical 
stripling fresh from our universities, whose knowledge of man's 
life is at best derived from a dead literature, and whose ideas of 
devotion have been acquired in a college chapel ? Does he seek 
it from the sleek and pompous dignitary who is weekly gibbetted 
in the "Times" for his pluralities or his nepotism ? Does he 
seek it from the pulpit oratory of the " crack" preacher who is 
obliged to pander to the sickly appetite of his audience by con- 
stant novelties of interpretation, and to lard his lean theology 
with spices of German spiritualism ? 

I do not say that the clergy (some of them at least) do not 
and cannot instruct us in the principles of natural morality which 
Christianity inculcates ; but they do this no longer authoritatively 
— as Priests with a divine commission, but simply as men of 
culture, intelligence, and character ; and if they be deficient in 
these secular accomplishments, however skilled they may be in 
professional lore, they are as wearisome and contemptible as the 
old " Mass Johns" of Popery in the sixteenth century. The 
pulpits of the Church are confessedly incapable of supplying the 
spiritual wants of the age from the legitimate fountains of ortho- 
doxy, and consequently every form and variety of quackery is 
adopted to gratify the flagging appetite of "Evangelical" con- 
gregations. The popular preacher seizes on the topic of the 
hour with the rapidity of a speculator in Capel Court. The 
death of a statesman, or the sinking of a steamboat, makes the 
fortune of the Sto wells, the Macneils, and the Cummings of the 
day. 

But this state of things cannot last. Sacerdotalism, in every 
part of Europe, is being brought face to face with the needs and 
aspirations of humanity. In philosophical strictness, there are 
but two sects in the religious world — those who repose on autho- 
rity and tradition, and those who acknowledge the claims of 
reason and conscience : and all attempts to mediate between 
them are based upon vicious logic, or dishonest sophistry. The 
great question that has been struggling for solution for three 
centuries, is, whether the Bible shall overrule the conscience, or 



56 



the conscience sit in judgment on the Bible ? The evangelical 
Churchmen assert that the Bible reveals to us a perfect and 
positive rule of faith and morals, to which the conscience must 
submit. But the question immediately arises, " Who shall inter- 
pret the Bible ?" If this power be claimed by the Church, in 
any sense (that is the motley Priesthood we have described), 
then it must, of course, assume infallibility, and a paramount 
authority, or it will be incompetent for its office — and this, dis- 
guise it as we will, is Popery. If it be asserted that the " pri- 
vate judgment" of earnest and sincere men will always assent to 
any given interpretation of scripture, and thus produce unity of 
doctrine — the fact is disproved by daily experience, and the 
existence of a hundred sects. It is mere bigotry to assert that 
all men who do not agree with ourselves in questions of school 
divinity, history, or criticism, have not honestly desired to find 
the truth in scripture. All thinking men desire religious know- 
ledge, and are glad of any means (by external or internal revela- 
lation) by which it can be attained ; but all thinking and honest 
men do not assuredly interpret the Bible alike, or believe equally 
in its supernatural pretensions, and its uniform authenticity and 
genuineness. The utter confusion of Protestant logic on this 
matter of the relative claims of the Bible and the conscience, is 
one of the greatest curiosities of modern polemics. We are 
sometimes told that the Bible approves itself to the en- 
lightened conscience ; but what is this but to assert that the 
conscience has already exercised the right of judging the Bible, 
as it would judge any other book ? 

I must again declare my profound conviction that the popular 
religion is becoming daily less acceptable to the educated and 
thoughtful portion of Christendom, and that it has actually 
ceased to have any real influence on the people. A reconsider- 
ation of the true basis of religious belief has become absolutely 
necessary. I protest against Lord Macaulay's doctrine,* that 
theology makes no progress even as a science, and that because 
Sir Thomas More, a man of genius and piety, with our New 
Testament in his hands, could accept the absurdity of " tran- 

* See Review of Eanke's History of the Popes. 



57 



substantiation/' and die for it, three centuries ago, men will 
always continue to act and reason thus, on the same premises, 
ft is true indeed that man's soul will be for ever enveloped in 
mystery and wonder, but it by no means follows that the same 
objects will continue mysterious and wonderful to us. The 
" burning ploughshare" was once a cherished institution to the 
conservative wisdom of the Heptarchy. I believe that men 
have ceased, or will soon cease, to be the martyrs of opinions like 
these. But there is another question to be considered. Will 
men continue to allow the same authority to the Scriptures which 
they conceded in the sixteenth century, when " plenary inspi- 
ration" was an accepted doctrine of the Church and of the 
people ? This doctrine of " inspiration" is now being tranquilly 
discussed by educated Christians as a question of philosophy ; 
and even religious men are asking themselves, whether the 
" inspiration" of Paul and that of Luther differed in kind, or 
only in degree ? Lord Macaulay reminds us that modern 
fanaticism is as wild and monstrous as in the darkest ages of 
the world, and this is true enough. But is it equally diffused ? 
Are not the relative proportions of fanatics and rationalists 
widely different from what they were in the dark ages ? He 
thinks Popery all but indestructible, because it has so often 
survived the assaults of revolted nations and insulted humanity, 
and he points to its vigorous revival immediately after the 
-Reformation, But I believe there is a cure for Popery, and a 
very simple one. The cure for Roman Catholicism is a wider — 
a human Catholicity. She will perish when a more generous 
creed shall appeal to a deeper humanity. 

Lord Macaulay concludes his " brilliant" essay in these words: 
" We by no means venture to deduce from these phenomena 
" any general law, but we think it a most remarkable fact, that 
" no Christian nation which did not adopt the principles of the 
" Reformation before the end of the sixteenth century, should ever 
S( have adopted them. Catholic communities have since that 
'•'time become infidel, and become Catholic again, but none has 
"become Protestant." Now I think that Lord Macaulay 
ought, as a philosopher, to have deduced a "general law from 

E 



58 



these phenomena." If whole nations freed from the tram- 
mels of Popery, fall into infidelity, and come back again, some 
of them to Popery (without accepting Protestantism at all), is 
it not clear that our make-believe Protestantism does not meet 
the religious wants of mankind ? The fact is that our Protes- 
tantism is the mere negation its name bespeaks, and men prefer 
even a wrong principle to no principle at all- — a positive to a 
negative creed. What Lord Macaulay probably means by 
" infidelity" is (amongst the higher and purer minds of every 
age) a passionate desire for a truer and more Catholic religious 
philosophy. The publication of the " Essays and Reviews" is 
an indication that men are really beginning to look with fresh 
eyes upon the vital principles of belief, and to turn once more 
from " theology" to nature. All honest, earnest, and cultivated 
men have substantially the same religious ideas, and it is only 
when these ideas are too sharply and rigidly denned in creeds 
and formulas, that the heresies and discords of polemics, and 
the crimes and follies of the Churches, come into existence. 
These "ideas" are the only "Catholic verities," and religion for 
its ultimate character depends on the simplicity and purity with 
which they are entertained. It is, I think, abundantly clear 
that the existing priesthood is utterly incompetent for the task 
of directing the present religious movement amongst the nations 
of the world. Let us trust that the Eternal Spirit, which has 
inspired us with new hopes and new desires for the spiritual 
development of humanity, will also, in good time, raise up 
amongst us a race of Seers and Evangelists able to entertain, 
and capable of expounding them. 



THE END. 



BILLING, PBIETEB, GUILDF3BD, SFEEEY. 



